





























THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS AND 
CHRISTIANITY 


ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 





THE eosin i 
MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 
AND CHRISTIANITY 


A STUDY IN THE RELIGIOUS BACKGROUND 
OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY 


BY 


S. ANGUS, Pu.D., D.Lir., D.D. 


PROFESSOR OF NEW TESTAMENT AND HISTORICAL THEOLOGY 
ST ANDREW’S COLLEGE, SYDNEY 


29 


NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
1925 


Printed in Great Britain by 
Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury. 


Kal voodmev éxetva ovK eldwra adta&v ovdé Tbrovs 
éxovres, ef 5€ wh Tovro dvres exeiva. 


Plotinus, Enneades, VI. 5, 7. 


7 aogpdy 5 od codla. 
Euripides, Bacchae, 395. 


Uno itinere non potest pervenire ad tam grande Secretum. 
Q. Aurelius Symmachus, Rel, III (Seeck’s ed. p. 282). 





FOREWORD 


For over a thousand years the ancient Mediterranean world 
was familiar with a type of religion known as Mystery- 
Religions which changed the religious outlook of the Western 
world, and which are operative in European civilization and 
in the Christian Church to this day. Dean Inge, e.g. in his 
Christian Mysticism, p. 354, says that Catholicism owes to 
the Mysteries “the notions of secrecy, of symbolism, of 
mystical brotherhood, of sacramental grace, and, above all, 
of the three stages in the spiritual life: ascetic purifica- 
tion, illumination, and éromrefa as the crown.” These 
Mysteries covered an enormous range, and manifested a 
great diversity in character and outlook, from Orphism to 
Gnosticism, from the orgies of the Cabiri to the fervours 
of the Hermetic contemplative. Some of them, e.g. the 
Eleusinia, were Greek, but the majority were of Oriental 
provenance and all were infected by the spirit of the Orient. 
The most important were the Greek Eleusinia, the cults of 
the Cappadocian Mén, the Phrygian Sabazios and the Great 
Mother, the Egyptian Isis and Serapis, and the Samothracian 
Cabiri, the Dea Syria and her satellites, the Persian Mithra. 
For over eleven centuries Eleusis supported the hope of 
man till destroyed by the fanatic monks in the train of 
Alaric in 396. The Orphic gospel was heard in the Mediter- 
ranean for at least twelve centuries. For eight centuries 
Queen Isis and the Lord Serapis swayed their myriads of 
devotees in the Greek world, and for five centuries in the 
Roman. The Great Mother was passionately revered for 
six centuries in Italy. For over half a millennium the 
approach to religion for thoughtful minds was by the Gnostic 


path. Such facts—since no religion persists by its falsehood, 
vii 


Vili FOREWORD 


but by its truth—entitle the ancient Mysteries to due 
consideration. As an important background to early 
Christianity and as the chief medium of sacramentarianism 
to the West they cannot be neglected ; for to fail to recognize 
the moral and spiritual values of Hellenistic-Oriental 
paganism is to misunderstand the early Christian centuries 
and to do injustice to the victory of Christianity. Moreover, 
much from the Mysteries has persisted in various modern 
phases of thought and practice. 

As we attempt to re-live the experiences or to recapture the 
mentality of the past, to break upon the inexorable silences 
of perished centuries, to give heed to those who laboriously 
devoted themselves to the everlasting human problem, 
and to understand the old emphases which have shifted, our 
attitude must be that of sympathy as also of appreciation 
of every effort made by the human spirit toward reality 
and toward the attainment of— 


“that blessed mood, 
In which the burthen of the Mystery, 
In which the heavy and the weary weight 
Of all this unintelligible world 
Is lightened.” 


‘ 


Every endeavour to secure ‘‘ news from the inner court of 
things’ and to bring man into touch with the Eternal is of 
worth in our human story. Without undue generosity we 
may have patience with men who set out for a goal which 
they never reached, realizing that the failures of former 
generations are as interesting, and often more instructive, 
than their successes. 

In estimating the Mysteries we must not judge them, any 
more than any other religions, by their lowest forms, but, 
as Cicero recognized, we must take the example from the 
highest and judge them rather by their ideals, It is an 
historic injustice to compare the Bacchi of one religion 
with the thyrsus-bearers of another. If there is only one 
River of Truth, into which tributaries from all parts flow, 
as asserted by the most readable of the Christian Fathers, 
Clement of Alexandria, who lived in the heyday of the 


FOREWORD ix 


Mysteries, we need not disdain the tributaries. The pagan’ 
misunderstandings of primitive Christianity are a warning 
to the student of religious history. Celsus in all good faith 
viewed his equally honest opponent’s religion as gross 
- superstition. The holiest rite—Agape—of the first believers 
was travestied as the occasion of immoralities and 
‘Thyestean banquets.’ The absence of image, sacrifice, 
and temple seemed to lead to the obvious conclusion that 
Christians were ‘ Atheists.’ 

This disability of the adherent of one religion to under- 
stand the adherent of another religion is an unlovely fact 
in the history of religions and by no means antiquated to-day. 
Men are separated in their religious sympathies by culture, 
tradition, era, individual and group experiences. The 
saintly John Wesley saw in Catherine of Genoa “a fool of 
a saint.”” A late Dean of Westminster, Dr. Farrar, spoke 
disparagingly of one, whose death-scene in the interests of 
moral integrity has appealed to the imagination of twenty- 
three centuries, as “the ugly Greek.’’ A cultured Greek 
like Herodotus was astonished at the aniconic worship of 
Persia, and the Romans were bewildered to find no image 
in the temple of Jerusalem. 

In the study of the Mysteries we shall see truth and error 
side by side, the spirituality of the true epoptes and the 
magic sacramentarianism of the literalist, the inability to 
distinguish between the cult act and the religious experience. 
We shall detect the conjunction of faith and credulity, the 
degeneration of mysticism into occultism, the revivalist 
phenomena and mass-psychology, and those pathological 
conditions of illusion, suggestion, and hypnotic hallucination 
and emotional excitations which too easily issue in moral 
aberrations, We shall meet the extravagances and extremes 
which are the concomitants of every great movement, and 
which in healthy creative periods are kept in restraint, but 
waiting to force their way to the front with any weakening 
of the originating conception or native power. 

On the other hand, the Mysteries stood for much of 
permanent value. Above all they emphasized the perfect 








= FOREWORD 


humanity and passion of the Deity, and suggested a fellow- 
ship of suffering as the pre-condition to participation in the 
divine victory. This Sympathia was more akin to the 
mediaeval desire to share the sufferings of the Saviour in 
extreme forms, as in the marks of the Cross or the wounds 
of Christ. They offered a gospel of salvation by means of 
union with Saviour-Gods, and of a Hereafter of blessedness 
for initiates. As trans-social organizations they furthered 
personal religion. In their general trend they made for 
monotheism. In their emotional triumphs they satisfied 
the need of exaltation and escape. By their cosmic outlook 
they made men comfortable in an uncomfortable Universe. 
Never was there an age which heard so distinctly and 
responded so willingly to the call of the Cosmos to its 
inhabitants. The unity of all Life, the mysterious harmony 
of the least and nearest with the greatest and most remote, 
the conviction that the life of the Universe pulsated in all its 
parts, were as familiar to that ancient cosmic consciousness 
as to modern biology and psychology. By the articulation 
of their symbolism they adumbrated that indefinable aspect 
of man’s religion of which Otto has so excellently taken 
account in his Das Heitlige, as they also witnessed, if feebly, 
with Bonaventura: “If you would know how these things 
came to pass, ask it of desire, not intellect ; of the ardours 
of prayer, not of the teaching of the schools.” 

The Mysteries can no more be studied in isolation than 
can early Christianity. Hence a study of the Mysteries 
demanded a prolonged study of their background of ancient 
magic and sorcery in all their varieties, theosophy, theurgy 
and occultism, daemonology, astrology, solar monotheism 
and Element-Mysticism ; also of their kindred philosophies, 
Stoicism, Neo-Pythagoreanism, and Neo-Platonism. The 
reading, therefore, of e.g. Sextus Empiricus, Plotinus, the 
Commentaries of Proclus, the magic papyri, the Astronomica 
of Manilius, is directly relevant to an understanding of the 
world of the Mysteries. 

Quotations from ancient sources are enclosed in single 
quotation marks; those from modern authorities in the 


FOREWORD <I 


usual double marks. Translations from both are, unless 
otherwise specified, by the writer. 

A Selected Bibliography has been added, restricted to 
accessible works, which, it is hoped, will enhance the value 
of the book to students. The chief ancient sources are also 
given. 

To my colleague Principal G. W. Thatcher, of Camden 
College, Sydney, and to Professor Leslie H. Allen, of Royal 
Military College, Duntroon, thanks are due for having read 
the manuscript and given me the advantage of useful 
criticisms and suggestions. J am especially indebted to 
Professor Vittorio Macchioro, of the Royal University and 
National Museum of Naples, for the care with which he read 
the manuscript, and for the great privilege which he afforded 
me of examining important archaeological remains of the 
Mystery-Religions under his expert guidance. As on a 
former occasion I would once more record my gratitude to 
Professor H. A. A. Kennedy, New College, Edinburgh, for 
valuable suggestions in revision of the manuscript. It is 
fair to add that in such a wide and controversial field the 
writer alone is responsible for the views expressed. 

As a Britisher I would take this occasion of expressing 
my grateful appreciation of American hospitality extended 
unstintingly during visits to Western Theological Seminary, 
Pittsburg, Southern Baptist Seminary, Louisville, the 
Presbyterian Seminary of Kentucky, the Union Theological 
Seminary, New York, and Chicago University, where the 
material of the volume was delivered, wholly or partially, 
in lecture form since November 1920. I would also make 
grateful mention of a memorable week as guest of Manitoba 
College, Winnipeg, Canada, in October 1923, and of a visit 
to the University of Toronto. 

So At 


EDINBURGH, 
September 18, 1924. 





CONTENTS 


PAGE 
FOREWORD . . . . ° ° ° . . pi, Was 
CHAPTER I 
ORIENTATION: THE HISTORICAL CRISES OF THE GRAECO- 
ROMAN WORLD IN THEIR BEARING UPON THE 
MYSTERY-RELIGIONS AND CHRISTIANITY 
Importance of the Hellenistic and Roman Age for subsequent 
DIStOLY sp « : . “ . I 
1. Bankruptcy of Greek religion and disintegrating influence of 
Greek philosophy . i $ ° é . 10-15 
Greek religion in its conjunction wath the city-state . at, sak 
Evolution under philosophy P - . ; ° wy ee 
Chief causes of failure . 2 : : ‘ A : ee, oie: 
2. Alexander the Great . ‘ . . ‘ : ° 15-22 
The new Cosmopolitanism . . ‘ : . : 16 
The Koiné : ‘ : H A . : é 17 
Theocrasia 4 ‘ ‘ > ‘ . ° . Oe isk 7 
A potheosis : : : : r 5 : 20 
Monotheism ‘ . ; : ° : ° 22 
3. Appearance of the Jews in world-history . ° . : oie) (32 
The Diaspora. . : ‘ ; . . . wi) 23 
Rise of Anti-Semitism . 2 : ¢ ‘ : . es 
Jewish propaganda—its success . ° ‘ ‘ : wie? 
Fusion of Jewish and Hellenistic thought . . , Pa ee 
4. The Romans in contact with the East . : . . e030 
Roman religion and foreign cults - “ ‘ : aU SE 
The religious crisis of the Second Punic War. . . sche 32 
The Imperial Age : . . . . . ° an gO 
Drift toward Orientalism . . ‘ . . ° NY f 


xiii 


XiVv CONTENTS 


CHAPTER II 
WHAT IS A MYSTERY-RELIGION ? 


Fragmentary nature of our sources . : : . . ~~ 39 


Growth of Mystery-cults from humble origins . . ° oes 
Four periods in their evolution . : - : year. ee 


A Mystery-Religion is: 


1 A system of religious symbolism . - ‘ . : Pe 
Materialistic Pantheism of Stoicism . : : . eS iy 
Allegorical interpretation ‘ . . ° ; ean 49 

2. Areligion of redemption . . : . . ° een | 

3. Agnosis . : c . . . . ° yee U4 

4. A sacramental dima . 5 . : 5 2 pa ats: 

5. An eschatological religion . A ° ° ° . at ROS 

6. Primarily a personal religion : - . . : «8 105 

7. A cosmic religion * 3 . > A . P Pe | 


CHAPTER IIl 


THE THREE STAGES OF A MYSTERY 


Immense varieties in the Mysteries ° . : . . “ eee 
I. Preparation and probation : é . . : ; 77 
Vows of secrecy and deterrent feamartiag . 4 ebay Ay 
Confession . ‘ . : ° < ° : ¢. /-5808 
Baptisms and lustral Peraeauons . . . . a | BE 
Sacrifices . : 4 : : ss 3 P 83 
Ascetic preparations . - : E A ae Oe 
Pilgrimages of a penitential cise . . . i . yo 
Self-mortifications and mutilations ; A 5 : 87 
Other rites mentioned in ancient authors : - n oo 
Robing, crowning, enthroning : 4 ‘ 5 : gI 

II. Initiation and communion . é ; " 5 5 - gI 
Ceremonies of initiation . ¢ 5 é 92 
Question of esoteric doctrines and cetechumenaes 5 oe OS 

The Taurobolium . ° < : A : . ay hoy! 
Regeneration . 4 . . PM he: 
Communion and union Bess the Destys ; 5 : 7 1 £00 

a. Ecstasis and pa asiasees : : . . oe tor 

b. Deification 4 ; ; : ? . ; OG 

Mystic identification (Henosis) : ; é e209 


Endowment with deathlessness by transubstantiation 110 
Divine indwelling . ° ° ° ° ° Sulit 


CONTENTS XV 


PAGE 
c. Religious marriage . ‘ . : Pe ee 
ad. Sympathia with the Mystery Deity Q , - EL 
e. Divine services . “ ° . - “ee E21 
f. Sacramental meals. ° ° - F ; ee lay 
g. Contemplative adoration . . ; * Soul hick 


III. Epopteia and Blessedness . : : : £ LSS 
Epiphany of the Deity . i 5 : 2 melas 


Salvation in general . ° . . . : . eS 7, 
Immortality . ° . . : . . . obey 
CHAPTER IV 


THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


A, Conditions favourable to the spread of the Mysteries: 


Initial obstacles . - : ° . . : See 

Spread promoted by : 
1. Influence of Orphism . “ : z 4 . t5o 
2. Collapse of the Polis . : sae 5O 
3. Unification of mankind by Aineaaaee nad the Romans eS 
4. Powerful reflex action of the Orient upon the Occident . 157 
5. Influence of the populace . 2 ‘ : - 159 
6. Astralism . = “ : ‘ 5 : + tOa 
7. Resurgence of Chthonism ; Ms ; ° 3 aa LOO 

CHAPTER 


THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


Alleged reasons of their rapid spread . * : ‘ : ee eds: 


B. The religious needs of the Graeco-Roman world and their 
symptoms: 


1. Individualism A “ A 5 ; = - ae 77, 
2. Syncretism . : * 3 2 : " : Lor 
Main causes of . r : - ° 3 : Be Aitslyg 
Extent of . m : ‘ : “ . yp etey 
3. Religious private sssociatibns | . . . : - 196 
Extent and epoch-making character of . : . ey 204 
4. A new sense of sin and failure : ° ° ° 3200 
Circumstances developing such . é : 4 aeO7 
5. Asceticism . - : ; TH 2t6 
Reasons for spread and persistence . . . UTR G: 
6. Universal cry for salvation . c : ° “nae 225 


7. Yearning for immortality ° ° . : ° ae 230 


XVi CONTENTS 


PAGE 
235 
237 
240 
244 
245 


CHAPTER VI 
THE DEFECTS OF THE MYSTERIES AND THEIR ULTIMATE 
FAILURE 

Success of the Mysteries . : ° ‘ 4 
Views of ancient writers . ‘: s ; : A 

Prayers. 7 é j . ‘ . 
Views of modern writers . : i . F * 

Ethical value ‘ Bs i < : i s 


Four chief defects : 
1. Atavism to primitive Naturalism . 


2. Linked with a pseudo-religion, Magia anit ite a pseudo- 


science, Astrology . . 2 : . 
3. Extreme individualistic-mystic types of religion . 
4. Vagueness, weak theologically . ° ° . 


CHAPTER VII 


THE VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 


Alleged reasons for its victory . F . ‘ 
Outstanding merits and chief weapons of its propaganda : 
1. Intolerance . . . . ° 
2. Its genuine Saiversality : s “ . ° 
3. Christian faith—a new religious force . : . 
4. The Greek Bible ; . 
5. A satisfying message for the widespread sorrow of the 
world . : . . . . 
6. An historic and personal centre . . ° . 
BIBLIOGRAPHY : 
Modern authorities pi : ‘ : : . 
Chief relevant ancient sources. ‘ 8 . ° 
INDEX: 
Authors ° ° 4 : . : ° ° 


Subjects . : . : ° . ° ° 


ancient 


247 


249 
257 
262 


273 


277 
283 
287 
297 


304 
309 


315 
332 


351 


355 


THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS AND 
CHRISTIANITY > 


CHAPTER I 


ORIENTATION : THE HISTORICAL CRISES OF THE GRAECO- 
ROMAN WORLD IN THEIR BEARING UPON THE MYSTERY- 
RELIGIONS AND CHRISTIANITY 


‘Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo.’—ViRGIL. 


In order to a proper understanding of the strange 
phenomenon presented by the rapid spread of the Eastern 
Mystery-cults in the Graeco-Roman world, the conflict of 
Christianity with, and ultimate triumph over, its competitors, 
the gradual and finally almost complete subjugation of the 
West to Oriental ways and thoughts and modes of worship, 
we must take into account the political, social, and religious 
history of the Mediterranean world during the period of 
approximately seven centuries, from the invasion of the 
East by Alexander the Great in 334 B.c. until the foundation 
of Constantinople by the first Christian emperor in A.D. 327. 
We must also review the means by which the new order 
inaugurated by Alexander arose out of the old order which 
had dominated the peoples of the Eastern Mediterranean. 
This period is of enthralling interest to the student of 
the history of religion. In these centuries the vital forces 
of old and ripe civilizations were brought to a focus. New 
ideas were implanted in human society which have been 
productive of much good—and evil—for all subsequent 
history. If these centuries cannot boast of anything so 
sublime as Hebrew prophecy or anything so perfectly 
5 I 


Vint. Opa fal Comey te tn a. “ofr. Fah prien, Afinny,,, 3 Lf Wan, oy A05 

hn, Supe bat - hen ah fa nf bow fotze Gann  @ Bans 
re b> +d pS A eOd S Ww 

nt SO  OmENTATION 
finished and perennially beautiful as the classics of the 
Periclean age, they present, in their chequered story, themes 
that rival in human interest those of the Christianizing of 
Western Europe, the rise of the Holy Roman Empire, the 
Crusades, the Renaissance, the discoveries of the fifteenth 
and sixteenth centuries, the Reformation and Counter- 
Reformation, and modern social reconstruction. During 
the ages stretching between the teaching of Aristotle 
and the baptism of Constantine mankind witnessed the fall 
of the folis—that most wonderful and fruitful of the 
political experiments of ancient history; the meteor-like 
appearance of Alexander the Great; the rapprochement 
between East and West such as has never since been 
achieved ; the growth and influence of the Jewish Diaspora, 
the chief path-finder for Christianity; the political 
supremacy of the West over the East for the first time 
and the establishment of the first western empire; the 
dissemination of Oriental mysticism and with it a world- 
renouncing ethic in the West; the prevalence for half a 
millennium of the Gnosis conception of religion which 
left its indelible mark on Christian theology ; the beginning 
and rapid spread of those voluntary associations for religious 
purposes and mutual support which have done so much to 
shape human society ; the rise of the Roman Empire, the 
culminating factor in the consummation of ‘ the fulness of 
the time.’ 

This period witnessed also the rise of a problem very similar 
to that which the Great War has accentuated for us— 
that of internationalism and nationalism. All the previous 
empires of the Orient had been based upon the principle of 
internationalism : some of them, e.g. the Assyrian, attempted 
to crush nationalism, others, e.g. the Persian, adopted a 
liberal policy toward subject nationalities. This liberal 
policy Alexander the Great expanded and transmitted to 
Rome. The ancient solution of the problem was instructive. 
Empire and Church and Oriental religions alike aimed at 
internationalism and achieved it to a degree unknown 

Cf Kaerst, Gesch. des hellenist. Zeitalters, I, p. 408. 


INCURSIONS OF BARBARIANS 3 


hitherto or since, so that internationalism prevailed in the} 
world for about two millennia. It did not endure. During| 
the Middle Ages racial, linguistic, and climatic factors 
reasserted the national or enchoric principle. 

The economic life of the West was also profoundly affected 
by the introduction of the industrial and commercial spirit 
of the Asiatics, who, whether Syrians; Egyptians, 
Phoenicians, Carthaginians, or Jews, were adepts in barter 
and trade of all kinds. This spirit, once introduced, found 
a congenial soil in the practical West, which has in this 
respect outstripped its teachers (except perhaps the Jews) 
and carried competitive commerce to such an extent that 
Western society now seems to Oriental eyes to rest on a 
material civilization. The Western political life was also 
in this period orientalized by the spread of the Eastern 
monarchical principle of government as against native 
Western democracy, and the consequent rise of a court-life 
which played a leading part in history for fifteen centuries 
in the West and has to this day maintained a shadow of its 
influence. 

In the third century B.c. Greek civilization was seriously 
threatened by the incursions of the Northern Keltic 
barbarians into the Hellenic peninsula and Asia Minor. 
Had they succeeded, Greek culture would have disappeared 
and thus the Roman masters of the world would have 
missed the refining influence of Greece.1_ Early in the third 
century A.D. the East again threw down the political 
challenge to the West in the rise of the Sassanid dynasty of 
Persia. Near the end of our period we read of the first 
appearance of the Franks on the Rhine, and the first 
invasions of Spain and Africa by these peoples who were 
destined to carry Roman civilization and Latin Christianity 
northward. Many other events of world importance might 
be mentioned from this period of human history. Never 
did mankind pass through more decisive crises, or drink a 
fuller cup, or witness greater social upheavals than during 
these centuries. 

1 Mahafty, Progress of Hellenism in Alexander’s Empire, pp. 43-6. 


4 ORIENTATION 


Throughout this long period, but particularly in the first 
Christian centuries, religious interests occupied the dominant 
place in the lives of the men and women who made the 
history of the Graeco-Roman world, with the result that for 
the ensuing thousand years, down to about A.D. 1300, 
“the basis of human organization is the religious motive, 
and human society is ecclesiastical in its primary inspira- 
tion.’ Men were in quest of a religion of redemption 
with an adequate theology and a satisfying and stimulating 
worship. On this point students of the Graeco-Roman 
world are in agreement. Thus Legge? affirms of the six 
centuries from Alexander to Constantine: ‘‘ There has 
probably been no time in the history of mankind when all 
classes were more given up to thoughts of religion, or when 
they strained more fervently after high ethical ideals.” 
Aust,? speaking of the imperial age, says: ‘‘ The hero is 
less honoured than the saint ; the religious movement puts 
its seal upon the century;’’ while Dill asserts of the same 
era: ‘‘ The world was in the throes of a religious revolution, 
and eagerly in quest of some fresh vision of the Divine, 
from whatever quarter it might dawn.” # 

That such statements are correct will appear from even a 
superficial acquaintance with the literature and thought of 
the Hellenistic and Roman age. In the ever-increasing 
asceticism and other-worldliness; the sustained efforts 
made to surmount Dualism; the rapid spread of Mysteries 
which taught men to find symbols of the spiritual in 
the material; the theocrasia which sought satisfaction for 
spiritual longings from whatever quarter ; the urgent call for 
salvation and appeals for redemption-religions ; the active 
religious missionary spirit and street-preaching; the 


1 E. Barker in Legacy of Rome, p. 77 

2 Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity, I, p. xlix. 

3 Die Religion der Romer, p. 107. 

4 Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius, p. 82. Cf. also Lake, 
Stewardship of Faith, p. 75 {.; Case, Evolution of Early Christianity, 
p. 31, ‘‘ Christianity arose in a very religious world’’; Hatch, The 
Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages, p. 292; Deissmann, Lichi, p. 242, 
‘** Ein tiefer religidser Zug durch diese ganze Welt hindurchging.”’ 


TREATISES ON PRAYER 5 


burdensome sense of sin and failure ; the earnest attempts 
to solve the enigmas of life and penetrate the mystery of the 
grave: in these and other features familiar to the student 
of the Graeco-Roman period are revealed the aspirations 
of this ancient world for a pragmatic view of God and the 
world upon which, in the phrase of Cicero, men might 
‘live with joy and die with a better hope.’ The themes 
which most engaged the minds of men were the nature and 
unity of the divine, the origin of evil, the relation of Fate 
and Fortune to Providence, the nature of the soul and the 
problem of immortality, the possibility of purification from 
moral stains, the means of union with God, and spiritual 
support for the individual life. Hellenistic philosophy 
became less scientific! and speculative, addressing itself 
directly to the practical business of the moral life until in 
Philo and Neo-Platonism it ended in a profound religion of 
unio mystica. 

From the days of Aristotle onwards numerous treatises 
were written on prayer,’ as, e.g., by Persius, Juvenal, the 
author of Alcibiades II, Maximus of Tyre. Practically every 
moralist of later paganism—Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, 
Lucian, Marcus Aurelius, Porphyry, Plotinus—devoted 
attention to this expression of the religious life. Many of 
their declarations upon this topic are marked by deep spiri- 
tual insight. Some of the language is of supreme beauty 
and might be used by Christian hearts. The many en- 
deavours made by statesmen, poets, and philosophers, to 
bring about a revival of religion indicate that religion 
was viewed as the imperative necessity of society. 
After the close of the Roman civil wars there was a genuine 
outburst of religious feeling and thanksgiving, of which, it 
is true, Augustus shrewdly took advantage for political 
and dynastic purposes. Even the apotheosis of Hellenistic 

1 Cf, “Mahaffy, What have the Greeks done for Modern Civilization ? pp. 
Na Ct. Schmidt, Veteres philosophi quomodo iudicaverint de precibus 
(Giessen, 1907); A. W. Mair, Prayer, in Hastings’ E.R.E.; C. Ausfeld, 


De Graecoram precationibus quaestiones, in Fleckeisen’s Jahrb. Supp. 
XXVIII, ’03. 


6 ORIENTATION 


kings and Roman emperors showed that far-sighted 
rulers recognized in religion the best bond of social cohesion 
and the best means of promoting loyalty. There is also 
abundant evidence that the numerous and _ terrible 
calamities of the period were generally attributed to neglect 
of worship for which some religious observance must atone. 
The history of the Punic wars furnishes a conspicuous 
instance. During that protracted struggle the populace, 
discouraged by defeats and terrified by prodigia, turned 
coldly away from their national gods toward new cults. 


The outbreak and universal prevalence of Superstition 
throughout the Graeco-Roman world is another index of 
its religious interests. As nationalistic religions decayed, 
individualistic tendencies were given freer play. Men did 
not cease to believe in the Supernatural or in divine inter- 
ference in the affairs of the world, but there was a profound 
change in belief as to the nature of the Supernatural and the 
means of placating demonic powers. The ritual means 
offered by the Western states were distrusted: individuals 
sought means of their own. Hence popular beliefs that had 
been kept under during the halcyon days of state-religion 
emerged once more, and methods of approach to deity 
formerly looked upon as not respectable or even prohibited 
came into vogue. Superstition was in its first stages the 
continued belief of the masses in deities toward whom the 
cultured were agnostic or atheistical. The first marked 
impetus to the spread of superstition was given by the 
breaking up of the priestly colleges of Mesopotamia by 
Alexander and the opening up of Egypt, the land of 
fascinating mystery, to the West, through Alexandria, From 
the days of the Second Punic War superstition grew apace, 
first among the lower classes, but gradually penetrating the 
higher classes until under the Empire it became universal. 
In eagerness to lose no liturgic formula or ceremonial secret 
men looked with admiration toward the East, and thus 
the way was opened to magic, astrology, demonology, 
theosophy, and physico-psychical experiments. The greatest 


RELIGIO AND SUPERSTITIO 7 


of the emperors, such as Augustus, fell a prey to super- 
stition, while Nero and Domitian lived under ghostly 
terrorism. Certain forms of superstition, viewed as politic- 
ally dangerous, were so popular that no legal enactments 
and no police investigations could exterminate them. Star- 
readers, necromancers, and purveyors of magical 
incantations drove a thriving trade. Governing circles were 
thwarted in their attempts to secure a monopoly of illicit 
means of forcing the hands of Deity by the tenacity with 
which their subjects clung tothem. ‘“ People could no longer 
take a bath, go to the barber, change their clothes, or 
manicure their finger-nails without first awaiting the 
proper moment.” } 

The rise of Superstitio or religiosity as a species of non- 
conformity against Religio was a symptom of the age, 
so that in post-Augustan literature the terms were often 
(as in Seneca) used synonymously, and Religio was given 
a bad name, as in Lucretius’ famous verse (I,I0I) : 


‘tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.’ 


The literature of the time teems with references to this 
religiosity. Cicero? contrasts superstition as timor-inanis 
deorum with religion as deorum cultu pio, and draws the 
distinction between the adjectives ‘superstitious’ and 
‘religious’ as alterum vitit nomen alterum laudis.s The 
rise of Epicureanism was a protest against current super- 
stition. The chief aim of Epicurus, for which he was 
acclaimed a ‘ Saviour ’ by his disciples, was to deliver man- 
kind from the terrors of superstition here by affirming the 
apathy of the gods, and hereafter by negating its existence. 
This passion inspired Lucretius‘ to his majestic De Rerum 
Natura, in which he characterizes superstitio as 


‘omnia suffundens mortis nigrore.’ 


1 Cumont, Religions orientales, Eng. tr. p. 165. 

BUNGD 47 A L173 

= Pp 2o 72. 

4 Cf, Sellar, Rom. Poets of the Repub. (3rd ed.), pp. 295, 309, 364 ff, 


8 ORIENTATION 


To cure the terrorem animi tenebrasque he applies the naturae 
species ratioque, while beyond the fammantia moenia mundt 
there are no terrors of hell but only darkness and nothingness. 
Seneca, as a man of his age and a student of religious 
pathology, recognized the power and the danger of this 
error insanus, which he endeavoured to exorcise by his Stoic 
principles. According to Augustine! he wrote a book 
Contra superstitiones. Lucian’s satiric pen exposed the 
religious foibles of his day, especially in his Philopseudes. 
The most readable account has been given us by Plutarch 
in his essay On Superstition. He describes superstition as 
a moral and emotional disorder as compared with Atheism 
which is an intellectual error.?. Fear is the motive of super- 
stition. The atheist believes that there are no gods; the 
superstitious wishes there were none,’ while he flees for 
refuge to the gods whom he fears. The dreadful presence 
of the Deity allows the superstitious man no respite by land 
or sea. Slaves may in sleep forget their tyrannous masters, 
but the superstitious man meets them in terrifying dreams.‘ 
Even in the exercise of his religion there is no comfort, for 
at the very altar he is tortured. For guidance he has resort 
to fortune-tellers and other impostors who relieve him of 
his cash. He bathes in the sea, sits the live-long day on the 
bare earth, besmears himself with mud, rolls on the dung- 
hills, observes sabbaths, prostrates himself in strange 
attitudes, passes time in silent contemplation before the 
god, employs absurd addresses and barbarous invocations, 
and makes religion an expensive affair, like the folk in the 
comedy who bestrew their beds with gold and silver while 
sleep is the only thing given gratis by the gods. There 
is one world common to waking men, while in sleep each 
wanders into worlds of his own. The deisidaimon, on the 
contrary, when awake fails to enjoy the rational world, 
and when asleep cannot escape the world of terrors. The 
power of superstition extends beyond the grave in attaching 
to death eternal torments—the yawning gates of Hell, 


1 De Civ. Dei, VI. 10. 2165 C. * 170 F. 
4165 D. 5 Ib. 166, 


PLUTARCH ON SUPERSTITION 9 


flaming rivers, the dismal Styx, and ghostly shapes. In 
physical maladies and family and political misfortunes the 
conduct of the superstitious contrasts unfavourably with that 
of the atheist. The former is unmanned by what he calls 
the ‘ plagues of the god,’ or ‘the attacks of the demon’: 
he denounces himself as hateful to gods and demons, and 
clad in miserable rags he makes public confession of his 
sins and negligencies. Atheism is not responsible for 
superstition, though the latter has conduced to the former. 
Plutarch concludes : 


‘No disease is so full of variations, so changeable in 
symptoms, so made up out of ideas opposed to, nay, rather, 
at war with one another, as is the disease called Superstition. 
We must therefore fly from it, but in a safe way and to our 
own good—not like those who, running away from the 
attack of highwaymen, or wild beasts, or a fire, have entangled 
themselves in mazes leading to pitfalls and precipices. For 
thus some people, when running away from Superstition, 
fall headlong into atheism, both rugged and obstinate, and 
leap over that which lies between the two, namely, true 
Religion.’ 


In the complementary essay On Isis and Osiris! Plutarch 
speaks of those who can transmute myths into symbols of 
religious truth as opposed to those who in their desire to 
shun the quagmire of Superstition slip unwittingly over 
the precipice of Atheism. 

The religious spirit, even the religiosity of the age, is 
further marked not only by the beginnings and spread “‘ of 
those great associations of mankind for religious purposes, 
henceforth the principal factors of world-history,’ * but 
by an aggressive religious propaganda such as no other 
age has surpassed. Each religion in the Roman world 
became a missionary religion ; to enlarge its prestige and 
increase its adherents was an obligation and a privilege 
resting upon the humblest member, The shrewdest Syrian 
merchant was not satisfied with the exchange of the wares 


1 Cf. Oakesmith, The Religion of Plutarch, p. 200. 
4) Legge, 1,.p. 27. 


Io ORIENTATION 


which produced his profits ; he was equally zealous to ex- 
change his spiritual wares, and did so with considerable 
success, as we know from the diffusion of the Syrian cults. 
Although there is rhetorical hyperbole in the statement that 
the Pharisees compassed sea and land to make one proselyte, 
there is ample evidence that the ubiquitous Jew was a 
successful missionary. The rapid and amazing dissemination 
of Mithraism throughout the West remains one of the 
outstanding phenomena of religious propaganda, 

Let us consider the antecedents of this religious world 
into which Oriental cults rushed like an irresistible tide ; 
what were the conditions which influenced and informed the 
spirit of this period ; what were the crises through which 
the Mediterranean nations passed which drove them loose 
from their old moorings ; and in what respects the Greek 
and the Roman, the Jew and the Oriental, reacted upon 
one another. We may summarize the decisive historic 
moments which opened the way for the Oriental religions 
and Christianity thus : 


I. BANKRUPTCY OF GREEK RELIGION AND THE DISINTE- 
GRATING INFLUENCE OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY 


Greek religion ! was the expression of a highly gifted and 
imaginative people which mirrored their social and 
intellectual development. The main features of the old 

‘Homeric faith were pantheistic polytheism and anthropo- 
morphism which made religion rich in humanized person- 
alities. The Olympian gods were clearly defined 
personalities, each with his assigned function and with his 
peculiar iconic representation. They were merely men 
of a larger growth who loved and quarrelled and lived a life 
of careless ease. Even Zeus was only a primus inter pares, 
unable to trench upon the province of associate or satellite 
deities, or to deflect the fixed course of Fate. A Greek 
pantheon was constituted in order to admit a dozen gods of 
different conquering races who entered Greece from the 

1 Cf. Angus, Greek Religion in Standard Bib. Dict. (2nd ed.), ’25. 


BANKRUPTCY OF GREEK RELIGION II 


North. The worship of these deities was as joyous and 
restrained as everything Greek, the characteristically Greek 
pndev aydy being inscribed upon a temple architrave. 
The Olympian religion was never conspicuously ethical : 
the morals of the Greek gods did not keep pace with the 
developing ethical consciousness of the Hellenes. It was 
not from their cults, but from their philosophy that moral 
ideals came to the Greeks. Greek thought in its laborious 
striving for a synthesis of the Many easily grasped the 
conception of the unity of the Deity, and the Greeks—the 
first higher critics—never hesitated to apply relentlessly 
any truth at whatever cost to their religion or institutions 
or mental comfort. A fatal blow was thus struck at poly- 
theism. Guided by this intuition that the Divine is one, 
the Greek mind pursued its way through henotheism and 
abstract monotheism toward a truer personal monotheism 
which it never quite attained. Both pillars of the temple 
of old Hellenic religion—polytheism and anthropomorphism 
—fell before the assault of criticism. There was a growing 
sense that religion must be rational and also satisfy the 
highest moral ideals. The myths became repulsive and were 
either repudiated as fables or interpreted symbolically by 
means of that maid of all work, Allegory. It is not Greek 
religion, except so far as it inspired art, but Greek ethical 
and mystical philosophy which has left an enduring heritage 
to mankind. Greek religion succumbed before ‘“‘ man’s 
meddling intellect.” In the period of the Enlightenment 
philosophy was coldly critical toward the popular religion, 
whilst in the last period Hellenistic philosophy itself assumed 
the character of a religion or a religio-ethical system, and 
in Neo-Platonism ended in contemplative mysticism. In 
the former period art and religion parted company, or, 
rather, art retained the religious myths as suitable subjects 
on which to exercise its aesthetic powers, 

The national character of Greek religion disappeared.! 

1 Cf, G. Murray, ‘‘ By the time of Plato the traditional religion of the 
Greek states was, at least among educated Athenians, a bankrupt concern.’’ 
Hib. Jour. Oct. 1910, p. 16. 


12 ORIENTATION 


The Greeks began to abandon their religion, which they 
believed came from the North, and to look with favourable 
regard upon religions coming from the East. Hence, particu- 
larly from the fourth century B.c. onwards, Oriental cults 
gained access into Greece, especially into Boeotia, Attica, 
and the Islands, the entrepots of a busy commerce, and 
this susceptibility to foreign religious influences increased 
in the Greek world till Greek minds began to devote them- 
selves to the metaphysics of Christian theology. Greek logic 
had acted as a solvent on Greek faith. To the Greek ethical 
sense— 


“Two questions arose naturally to the minds of all 
who thought about the common religion: first, what was 
the relation of Zeus to the other gods, and how could will 
and power in them be reconciled with his omnipotence ? 
And, second, what was the relation of Zeus to that over- 
powering Fate that seemed at times to control even his 
will 2’? 


The former was met by an answer which conduced to 
monotheism, that Deity is one and that all the gods are but 
manifestations of the One. To the latter men began to 
reply that Fate was merely the will of God executed in an 
intelligent Providence. 

While the ‘‘ conflict of religion and science, which had 
begun in the fifth century or even earlier, was the prominent 
fact in the fourth century,’ * in the final stages of Greek 
religion philosophy and religion attempted a rapprochement. 
Scepticism from the third century B.c. until the first century 
A.D. was even stronger than in the previous period, but 
this was the counterpart to a sturdier faith. Euhemerism 
might declare that the gods were merely deified men. 
Epicureanism might benignly grant the existence of gods 
while affirming their indifference to mortal affairs. The 
New Academy might affect a complacent superiority to the 
superstition of the masses. Nevertheless faith persisted 


1 Ramsay, Greek Religion, Hastings’ D.B. extra vol. p. 147. 
2 Ib. 


GREEK RELIGION AND THE POLIS 13 


and men looked heavenwards for support in the ills of life. 
The national Hellenic religion was dead beyond hope, 
but with it were not buried the faith and the hope of 
Greece. Its failure made place for more satisfying cults. 
This failure was inevitable from the rise of European 
philosophy among the Greeks of Ionia, whose criticisms were 
furthered by the eristic methods of the Sophists. Greek 
religion was doomed in the collapse of the polis which had 
given it its life and form.t Recuperative and propagating 
power there was none. Stereotyped in rich myths, classic 
verse, and artistic creations, it could ill adapt itself to the 
demands of a perplexing age. And Greek religion had one 
serious congenital defect—it appealed only to one side 
of man’s nature, the aesthetic. A religion of Beauty and 
Joy, it offered no message to men in the perplexities and 
sorrows of life; it was almost dumb as to a hope beyond 
death. Its most typical god was the bright, youthful, 
and many-talented Apollo. But the dark things of human 
life and destiny cannot be for ever kept in the background, 
and this was especially the case when the corporate ideal 
of the city-state was displaced by that of a sensitive in- 
dividual life. Besides philosophy there were two other 
influences which made mighty impacts on Greek religion, 
particularly in the Graeco-Roman period succeeding the 
Classic age—Oriental mysticism and Chthonic conceptions. 
- For a thousand years B.c. Greek religion was not wholly 
lacking in the mystic strain. Indeed, throughout the 
whole history of Greek thought there ran two concurrent 
and often conflicting tendencies, the ‘scientific’ and the 
* mystical,’ * the Olympian and the Dionysian, the philo- 
sophical and the intuitional. That the division cannot be 
made absolute will be obvious to readers of Prof. Macchioro’s 
Erachito.* Dionysus with his mysticism, doctrine of incarna- 
tion, divine passion, and sacramental grace, had found 


1 Rohde, Rel. der Griechen, p. 28 (Kl. Schr. II, p. 338). 

2 Cf. Cornford, From Religion to Philosophy, pp. viii, 110 ff. ; Harrison, 
Proleg. p. 474. 

3 Evaclito: Nuovi Studi sull’ Orfismo (Bari, ’22). 


14 ORIENTATION 


entry into the Greek peninsula about the tenth century B.c.1 
Mysticism made its next powerful attack upon Greece in the 
Orphic movement? of the seventh and sixth centuries, 
from the sacerdotalism and vagueness of which—fortunately 
for Europe—the intellect of Ionia and Athens delivered 
Greece. But from the fourth century B.c. the Greek 
spirit gave way with increasing docility to the mystic and 
psychic cults of the East. Greek philosophy, notably 
Platonism, Stoicism, Neo-Pythagoreanism, and Neo- 
Platonism, attempting the task in which Greek religion had 
failed, became in its last expression—Neo-Platonism—a 
religion of the ‘ spirit in Love’ *—which has appealed to the 
noblest minds through the ages and which through Augustine 
found entry into Christianity which it has influenced to this 
day. In this mystic religion of Redemption “ the ancient 
Greek religion sank. It was extinguished without much 
struggle, like an exhausted light as a new dawn broke upon 
it in power from the East.” ‘ 

Still more amazing among the least ghost-ridden of ancient 
peoples was the resurgence—from aboriginal strata or from 
whatever quarter—of chthonic notions about Earth- or 
Underworld-Powers. These views precipitated the mind 
toward the Mystery-Religions, which, originally nature 
cults, had conserved elements of chthonic and telluric ritual 
and which also were professedly eschatological religions. 

Such was the religious experience of the Greek people, the 
first of Mediterranean peoples to experience the fascination 
of a mystic religion of Redemption, who first essayed the 
adaptation of the Oriental spirit to the West which was 
completed in the triumph of Christianity, and who were to 
play such a part in giving expression to that great complex 
of Hellenistic-Oriental theology and to Christian thought. 
They went forth to hellenize East and West after they had 
witnessed the wreck of their city-state, after they had 


1 Farnell, Cults, V, p. 85 ff. 

2 Gruppe, Mythologie, II, p. 1016 ff. 
Bo Enn. N197, 35+ 

4 Rohde, p. 29 (K/. Schr. II, p. 339). 


ALEXANDER THE GREAT 18 


themselves become conscious of spiritual needs which could 
be satisfied only by religions of a more emotional and 
individual character. In their last genuinely Greek 
philosopher they furnished a tutor to Philip’s son: for their 
talents Alexander opened a boundless vista, and they 
supplied a lingua franca for the widely-scattered cult-brother- 
hoods of the Mystery-Religions and the house-churches of 
early Christianity. 


II. ALEXANDER THE GREAT 


The appearance of Alexander forms a turning-point in 
the history of the race with which may not be compared 
even the rise of the Roman empire, the coronation of Charles 
the Great at Rome in 800, or the Renaissance, or the 
Reformation. Alexander made all things new: the results 
of his work have affected all the religious history of the 
Mediterranean world and ithe civilizations descended 
therefrom. 

Alexander’s greatness does not merely rest on his 
marvellous military exploits—though in this field he has had 
no. equal—nor in his arresting the encroachments of Eastern 
despotism upon Western liberties, nor on his propagation 
of Greek culture (which has proved an inestimable boon to 
the progress of mankind), nor on his having antiquated | 
previous political systems of East and West. Alexander 
did all this and much more. Although the words of Daniel 
XI. 4 were literally fulfilled, little of the work of this ‘ mighty 
king’ has been undone. He did much to facilitate and 
inspire the exploits of the Romans, whose empire was the 
consummation of his work. 





“As a pioneer of Hellenic cultivation he became in the 
end the pioneer of Christianity. He paved the way for the 
intellectual empire of the Greek and for the political empire 
of the Roman. And it was the extent of that empire, 
intellectual and political, which has marked the lasting 
extent of the religion of Christ.’ 2 


1 E, A. Freeman, Hist. Essays, 2nd series, Lond. 1880, p. 225. 


16 ORIENTATION 


Wherein did his work affect vitally the religious life of the 
Hellenistic world and open the way for the adoption by 
the West of Oriental mystery-cults and finally for 
Christianity ? 

(a) Cosmopolitanism and the unity of the human vace.— 
Because of Alexander’s conquests and wise statesmanship 
it was easier for the Mystery-Religions, Stoicism, and Paul 
to declare ‘ he made of one every race of men.’ Alexander 
translated into a reality what Greek philosophy had fitfully 
advocated. He first broke down national barriers and set 
the nations free for international relationships. Well might 
the author! of The Fortune of Alexander say : 


| “Considering himself appointed by God as a universal 
ruler and reconciler . . . he brought together everything 
from every quarter. He mixed as in a loving-cup men’s 
lives and their customs and their marriages and modes of 
‘life. He commanded all to regard the world as their 
fatherland, the good as their kith, and the wicked as aliens ; 
|. - . for the Hellenic spirit was manifested only in virtue 
| and the barbarian only in vice.” 





Alexander was the inaugurator of that comprehensive 
cosmopolitanism which reached its apogee in the Roman 
Empire. Though favouring Greek culture, his larger aim 
was to accomplish “the marriage of East and West,” as 
was symbolized in striking fashion by the espousals of the 
féte at Susa. There was in a true sense to Alexander neither 
barbarian nor Scythian, Greek nor Jew. He was the first 
of ancient conquerors by whom the conquered were conceded 
any rights, and in this humane outlook he surpassed his 
Persian predecessors and the Roman conquerors of a later 
age. Neither Greek nor Macedonian was immune from the 
severest punishment if found guilty of oppression. The 
backbone of his army was the Macedonians, but multitudes 
of Greek mercenaries and adventurers thronged into his 
ranks, which were open also to Asiatic recruits. His army 
was thus an image of his empire in its cosmopolitan character. 
1 Pseudo-Plutarch, I 6 (329, C.D.). 


CONVERGENCE OF EAST AND WEST 17 


“ The generation which had seen Alexander face to face was 
hardly in its grave before the Marriage of Europe and Asia 
had become a very real and pregnant fact.” ! 

The exclusivism and particularism of the ancient world 
were broken up: in the new situation created by Alexander 
each race was challenged to contribute of its peculiar 
genius for the good of all. Henceforth East and West con- 
tinue to approximate in their moral and spiritual progress 
until they converge in the Christian era. This interaction 
of East and West, which has never ceased since Alexander’s 
day, was destined to be fruitful for good to all subsequent 
ages in enlarging life. Hebrew revelation, and Greek 
thought, and Oriental mysticism could never again be 
isolated. From this time date the diasporae of all the 
Eastern peoples*—Jews, Syrians, Persians, Egyptians— 
which became so active in proselytizing propaganda in the 
Roman Empire. 

In speaking of this cosmopolitanism it is impossible 
strictly to separate cause and effect. It may be said to have 
been promoted by Alexander’s deliberate policy of inter- 
mixing diverse populations ; his studied fair treatment of 
all peoples under his sovereignty ; the commercial activity * 
which was stimulated by opening up new fields of enterprise 
and by putting millions of hoarded Persian bullion into 
circulation ; by religious tolerance ; and in a conspicuous 
manner by providing the first universal tongue for the 
whole civilized world in the Greek Koiné. 

(b) The Koiné.—The spread of the Koiné or common 
Greek tongue deserves special mention as a potent factor in 
the religious propaganda of the following centuries. Before 
Alexander’s day Athens had chiselled for herself her dialect 
into that classic perfection which is the wonder of students, 
but Greece never had a uniform national language. Each 
separate city-state had its own patois, which in most cases 


1 Legge, Ip. 8. 

2 Cf. Lake, Earlier Epp. of St. Paul, p. 41 f. 

3 Cf. for the new economic situation, Wilcken, Alex.d Grosse u. d.hellenist, 
Wirtschaft in Schmoller’s Jahrbuch, XLV, p. 349 ff. 


3 


18 ORIENTATION 


was as distinct from that of its neighbour a couple of leagues 
distant as are Spanish and Italian. The term ‘ Hellas ’ 
never became a national or linguistic unity, the chief bond 
of union being a more or less catholic religion. While there 
was no uniform language in which Greek could converse 
with Greek it was impossible for Greece to exercise her 
intellectual hegemony. And if a man must learn a dozen 
Greek patois and half a dozen Oriental tongues before he 
could travel and exchange ideas with men of other races, 
he would prefer to remain at home. That Aramaic which 
had for centuries served as the diplomatic 1 language between 
the powers of the Nile and those of the Euphrates and 
Tigris ? was no longer adequate, and the perfect precision 
of Attic Greek was as impossible for the ordinary man as it 
seems now to a schoolboy in his first year. The other Greek 
dialects failed through poverty of vocabulary or rudeness of 
expression. 

By stress of circumstances—the collapse of the polis and 
with it the end of Greek jealousies and exclusivism, the 
indifference to patriotic interests engendered by individual- 
ism, the demand for Greek mercenaries in the armies of the 
East, but above all through the adoption of Greek culture 
and language by the Macedonians under Philip and Alex- 
ander, there arose out of the babel of Greek dialects and 
amid competition with Asiatic tongues a Greek language ‘ 
intelligible to every Greek and easy of acquirement by 
foreigners. It is important to realize what a stimulus to 


1 Cf. Aramaic Papyri discovered at Assuan, ed. Sayce and others (Lond. 
’06); E.Sachau, Drei aramdische Papyri aus Elephantine (in Abh. d. Kgl, 
Preuss. Akad. d. Wiss.) (Berlin, ’07); W. Staerk, Aram. Urkunden in Kleine 
Texte, 22, 23, 32 (Bonn, ’07-8), 

2 Cf. Schwyzer, Die Weltsprachen des Altertums (Ber. 1902). 

8 And as official and business language of the Arsacid Kingdom, cf. Ist 
cent. B.c, documents (2 Greek and 1 Aramaic) in E. H. Minns, Parchments 
of the Parthian Period from Avroman (in J.H.S. XXXV, pp. 22-65). 

4 Cf. A. Thumb, Dte griech. Sprache im Zeital. d. Hellenismus, p. 238; 
A. Deissmann, Hellenistisches Griechisch in R.E., 3rd ed. VII, p. 627 ff. ; 
A. T. Robertson, Grammar of the Greek N. T. ch. 111; P. Kretschmer, Die 
Entstehung der Koine in Sitzb. der kais. Akad. d. Wiss., Wiener Siudien, 
vol, 143, 1900, X Ab. 


THE KOINE—THEOCRASIA 19 


intellectual advancement 1 and what an excellent medium 
for the missionary activity of the subsequent centuries the 
Koiné proved, in which men could exchange ideas from 
Mooltan to Syracuse and from Macedonia to the cataracts 
of the Nile. It became the ordinary language of the liturgy 
and ritual of those cult-brotherhoods which promoted the 
equality of mankind. And this Greek lingua franca “‘ was 
a better medium for the transmission of metaphysical theories 
than the founder of any world-religion has ever had at his 
disposal before or since.’’ * 

(c) Theocrasia, or religious Syncretism,? on a stupendous 
scale was an immediate outcome of Alexander’s intermingling 
of races, and for the next seven centuries proved a potent 
factor in the religious history of the Graeco-Roman world, 
reaching its apogee in the III and [V centuries A.D. Every 
Mystery-Religion was syncretistic. Before the time of 
Alexander there are instances of the equating of their 
respective gods by different peoples, but from his day 
Theocrasia both became a universal practice and gained 
increasing momentum. Religious syncretism was abetted 
by the almost complete absence of intolerance, by the 
universal demand for Saviour-gods, by the medium of a 
common tongue, and by that mixture of races such as could 
be found to-day only in the United States. Alexander’s 
general policy of wedding East and West and of treating 
Persians, Greeks, and Macedonians on an equality ‘ conduced 
to equality of deities. He set the example in his foundation 
of Alexandria and pointed the three races in the same direc- 
tion by establishing a temple of Isis alongside a temple to 
Hellenic deities’ Inthe same capitala Ptolemy inaugurated 
on his successful career the syncretistic Serapis,* who was 


1 Cf. Butcher, Aspects of Greek Genius, p. 43. 

2 Legge, I, p. 9. 

3 Cf. Synkretismus in Altertum, in R.G.G. V. 1043 ff. 

4 Mahaffy remarks “ the studied equality of the three races’’ on the 
Sidonian sarcophagus (Survey, p. 237). 

5 Arrian, III. 1. 

8 Dieterich regards the creation of Serapis as the greatest event in 
syncretism, K/, Schriften, p. 159. 


20 ORIENTATION 


identified with Osiris-Apis, Zeus, Helios, Mithra, and 
Aesculapius. 

This syncretistic tendency increased in intensity under the 
Roman Empire. It prepared the way for the long sway of 
Oriental cults over the West and for the success of Christian- 
ity itself. Alexander’s empire suggested as its counterpart 
a world-religion, which the Roman Empire rendered 
imperative. Religious syncretism was carried to such an 
extent as to render it hazardous or impossible to define the 
differing features of any one of the numerous faiths com- 
peting for adherents in the ancient world. 

The Persian Mithra-cult was at least partially egyptian- 
ized1; the Egyptian Isiac cult largely hellenized.* Stoicism 
exerted an immense modifying influence upon Gnosticism.* 
The Hermetic literature is such a blend that scholars are 
not agreed as to the relative proportion of Egyptian, Baby- 
lonian, Stoic, Platonic, Neo-Pythagorean, and even Christian 
ingredients. We often cannot tell from sepulchral inscrip- 
tions to which cult the deceased belonged; the language 
would sometimes point equally to membership in the 
Christian Church or in a mystery-cult. One need merely 
cite as an example the famous Abercius inscription. 

(d) The apotheosis of Alexander deserves mention becatse 
of its far-reaching consequences for the next 2000 years both 
politically and religiously in introducing an entirely new 
conception of the Divine into the European world.‘ 

Deification during Alexander’s lifetime has been disputed, 
but without reason. Alexander was far too astute a states- 
man to forgo the advantages offered by religious uniformity 
and loyalty to his person based on religious authority. He 
was too anxious to cement the diverse parts of his world- 
empire to neglect a device of his predecessors in Persia and 
Egypt. As a consequence of Alexander’s adoption of this 
Oriental custom the apotheosis of kings and emperors 


1 Cf, Dieterich, Mithrasliturgie, 3rd ed. pp. 75, 81. 
2 Cf. Scott-Moncrieff, J.H.S. XXIX, pp. 79-90. 

8 Dieterich, Abraxas, p. 83 ff. 

* Legge, I, p. 17. 


APOTHEOSIS AND MAN-GOD aI 


became familiar to the West through the Diadochi! and the 
Romans. With this Oriental obsequiousness came the idea 
of the divine rights of kings which engaged pagan theologians 
for seven centuries and Christian theologians for another 
thousand years; the alliance of throne and altar through 
which Christianity was destined to suffer in prestige; the 
adoption of religious uniformity as an instrument for 
political unity—a device of government adopted by 
Antiochus Epiphanes, dear to the Roman and the early 
Christian emperors, to some of the occupants of the throne 
of the Holy Roman Empire, to Elizabeth and the Stuarts 
of England, and to the Valois and Navarre dynasties of 
France. 

Alexander’s assertion of his divinity, advantageous as a 
political device, proved disastrous to morality and religion. 
The wearers of these divine honours often vied with the 
Olympian gods in placing themselves above the recognized 
laws of morality. Their assumption of divine dignity 
accentuated their arrogance and cruelty, and contributed 
to the conversion of the principate of Augustus into the 
absolute despotism of Diocletian. This practice of deifica- 
tion was a retrograde step in the conception of the Divine 
and issued in the sceptical belief of Euhemerus that the gods 
were but deified men, a view which had a special fascination 
for educated Romans. It should be remembered, however, 
that such deification did not appear as strange to the 
ancients as it appears to us, nor would it have gained much 
recognition had it not expressed in a concrete form the 
*“ Man-God ”’ idea which had emerged in some form in every 
religion of the period, an idea which we find, e.g., in the 
Osiris legend of Egypt and the Mithra legend of Persia. 
Apotheosis also found a point of vital contact with the 
prevalent demand for intermediaries—priests, hypostases 
like the Logos or Sophia, demons, heroes—between God 
and man. 

(e) If Alexander in claiming divine honours took a step 


1 On apotheosis of Hellenistic kings v. Ferguson, Hellenistic Athens, 
p. 108 f, 


22 ORIENTATION 


which was fraught with more evil than good, in another 
direction his appearance promoted a worthier conception 
of the Divine by furthering monotheism, toward which 
Greek philosophy had been tending. His commanding 
personality aided by the universal religious syncretism 
accelerated a unitary conception of God. One obstacle to 
monotheism was removed by the political blow given by 
Alexander to the enchoric or parochial conception of Deity. 
The relation between kingship and divinity was of the closest 
order in antiquity, the king or superman being the visible 
incarnation of deity. The ancients instinctively sought 
visibility in their religion, a ‘ God manifest,’ and in Alexander 
they beheld one who bestrode ‘‘ the narrow world like a 
Colossus,’’ unimpeded by the tutelage of national gods and 
overthrowing systems immemorially under their patronage. 
Monarchy visible in state made the monarchic principle 
more accessible to theology. If the world was united under 
one ruler, why should men not believe in the rule of one 
God? This would be in accordance with Aristotle’s state- 
ment that the form of religion in a state is fashioned after 
the form of the government. 


> 


III. APPEARANCE OF THE JEWS IN WORLD-HIsSTORY 


The appearance of the Jews on the horizon of universal 
world-history has had vast consequences for the history of 
religion in antiquity and to-day. This obstinate people, 
with a thirst for righteousness and a passion for monotheism, 
stepped out of its long seclusion to deliver its perennial 
message and to realize its own prophetic ideals. In the 
Greek period commenced its long missionary career, which 
did not abate for half a millennium, until late in the second 
Christian century, as a consequence of the wars of exter- 
mination under Hadrian and the success of Christianity.? 

Previous to the Graeco-Roman period, Israel had come in 
contact successively with Egypt, Syria, Assyria, Babylonia, 
and Persia, but by none of these except the last was she much 


1 Harnack, Hist. of Dogma, Eng. tr. I, p. 108. 


THE JEWS IN WORLD-HISTORY 23 


influenced in her faith. Her attitude toward Persia was more 
docile than to the other suzerain powers. Of the two cen- 
turies (539-333 B.C.) under Persian domination, the first 
(539-444) was marked by attempts to recolonize Judaea, 
restore the Temple worship, and purge the nation of foreign 
accretions, and so create a second centre of Jewish thought 
beside that of Babylon where the best of the nation remained. 
During the next century (444-333) “‘ Judaism ”’ developed 
and Israel became a people ‘ fenced in by the Law.’ Alongside 
the spirituality of the exilic or post-exilic prophets appeared 
the ritualism, legalism, and traditionalism, so conspicuous 
in later periods. There is, however, another side to what 
appears hard in Judaism. The Law was necessary to con- 
serve the national consciousness and coherence of Israel in 
face of the disintegrating tendencies of Hellenism and the 
centrifugal forces menacing inner unity, chiefly the rise of 
antagonistic parties and a growing cleavage between 
Palestinian and Hellenistic Judaism. 

In 333 B.c. the Jews passed under vassalage to Alexander ; 
from his death in 323 they were subjects of the Lagids of 
Egypt until Antiochus the Great annexed Palestine, under 
whose suzerainty they remained until 167 B.c. Then, taking 
advantage of the difficulties of Syria, they asserted their 
independence, 167-63 B.c., until Pompey interfered in the 
affairs of Palestine. With the rise of the Arsacid kingdom 
of Parthia by secession from Syria in 249 B.c. the Eastern 
Jews came under Asiatic rather than Greek influence, and 
with the rise of the Sassanid power and the rehabilitation of 
Persia in A.D. 226 the Eastern Dispersion was left to pursue 
its own course. 

Alexander’s conquests were epoch-making for the Jews. 
He realized the wisdom of conciliating this stubborn people, 
who, perhaps, had earned his gratitude by acting as spies 
and guides in his campaigns. His example of liberal treat- 
ment, followed generally by the Lagids and the Seleucids 
and lastly by the Romans, increased the momentum of the 
Diaspora. There had been deportations of the Jews by 

1 Mahaffy, Empire of the Ptolemies, pp. 85-6. 


24 ORIENTATION 


Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians from Tiglath-Pileser 
(middle of VIII c. B.c.) until Artaxerxes Ochus (middle of 
IV c. B.c.). These dispersions had been due to compulsion 
and were eastwards. Moreover, Israel had not yet been 
sufficiently consolidated to resist the action of her new 
environment, as shown by the absorption of the ten tribes. 
A new era for the Jewish Diaspora began with the foundation 
of Alexandria in 331, whither Alexander transported many 
Jews, bestowing upon them equal municipal rights with 
Macedonians and Egyptians. This act and its influence 
upon Greek and Roman statesmen accelerated Jewish 
migration. Henceforth the Dispersion was mostly west- 
wards and voluntary. Attracted by the favour of rulers, 
new opportunities for commerce,! and facilities of intercom- 
munication, the Jews settled in ever larger numbers among 
alien populations. Now for the first time they came in 
contact with the Western spirit and were exposed to all the 
syncretistic influences of the Hellenistic world. They were 
neither to remain what they had been before the ‘‘ marriage 
of East and West,” nor to lose their peculiar character in 
the new world, but were destined henceforth to prove the 
main link between East and West, and so a unifying factor 
in world-history. In their collision with Hellenism they did 
not succumb, though they were profoundly affected by it 
and as profoundly left their impress upon it. Protected by 
the fence of the Law, their ritual, their services of the 
synagogue, and the Greek Bible, they faced the temptations 
of the Graeco-Roman world without losing the sense of 
righteousness which distinguished them among ancient 
peoples. The loss of their nationhood and political autonomy 
strengthened the spiritual bonds of cohesion and equipped 
them to become a leavening power in the alien world in which 
their future lay. They became a missionary nation to all 
nations. They promoted the growth of that monotheism 
which increasingly marks the centuries between Aristotle 

1 Friedlander (Roman Life and Manners, Eng. tr. III, p. 172) maintains 


that Jewish emigration was not to an appreciable extent determined by 
commercial motives. 


ANCIENT ANTI-SEMITISM 25 


and Constantine. The Septuagint in the lingua franca 
made pagans familiar with a holy book superior to anything 
that any other religion could offer. The synagogue was the 
centre of the life of the Diaspora. In every large town and 
city pagans were reminded of the presence of a pious people 
by a house of prayer or by several. ‘ There are opened on 
the Sabbaths in every city thousands of places of instruction 
in which wisdom and self-restraint and courage and justice 
and the other virtues are taught,’ says Philo.1 Those who 
thronged the streets to the markets, the law courts, the baths, 
the theatres, the museums, or the amphitheatre, beheld on 
fixed days the open doors of a synagogue, and overheard 
the music of praise and the solemn intonation of prayers. 
How many of these passers-by entered the house of prayer / 
and were arrested by the message of the LXX and the 
preacher we may not tell. The missionary enthusiasm of | 
Israel, which she bequeathed to nascent Christianity, the | 
example of a sober people amid the looser morals of paganism, | 
the open door of a house of prayer, the existence of voluntary | 
associations of men and women to cultivate the eaccdaiai'h 
life, the promises and the denunciations of the synagogue | 
pulpit, the reading of a holy book in the common tongue, 
could not fail to produce fruit. We have abundant evidence 
that the Jews not only remained loyal to their religion 
but won multitudes of converts and adherents. The 
odium humani generis hurled against the Jew from the begin- 
ning of the migrations under Alexander till the time of 
Hadrian is of importance in the history of Jewish propa- 
ganda. There were four main causes of this anti-semitism : 
(x) The success of the Jews in trade competition. (2) Re- 
ligious scruples exposed them to the charge of being un- 
social and unpatriotic. They could not be present at public 
banquets because of association with pagan cults; they 
could not join with their fellow-citizens on festal occasions 
for fear of contamination ; they could not evince loyalty 
by complying with the imperial cult ; they were averse to 
public games and the exercises of the gymnasium; the | 
1 De Sept. 6, M. II. 282. 








26 ORIENTATION 


theatre 1 they could not frequent because it drew largely on 
heathen mythology ; to them the spectacles of the amphi- 
theatre were loathsome. The mart was the only scene of 
public life which permitted close contact with pagans. 
(3) The spirit of revolt * which characterized the race from 
the conquest of Palestine by the Seleucids, 205 B.c., until 
the wars of extermination under Hadrian, a.p. 132. They 
took advantage of every perplexity in the affairs of the 
empire, the advantages of which they in no small measure 
reaped. When Syria was pressed on the east by Parthia 
and on the west by Rome, they seized the opportunity of 
asserting their brief independence which in the end threw 
them into the arms of their most hated suzerain. Their 
national hate flamed forth against Rome during the turmoil 
of the wars of the Neronian succession. When Rome was 
involved in conflict with her inveterate enemy, Parthia, 
in A.D. II3-I14, this insurgent people found occasion to 
revolt in the East. When Hadrian was occupied with 
frontier trouble in North Britain, Dacia, North Africa, and 
the East, Bar Cochba led the last revolt which ended in pro- 
digious bloodshed for both Jews and Romans. (4)° The 
success of Jewish propaganda in non-Jewish homes. In his 
zeal to influence the greatest possible number, the Jew 
recognized two degrees among those who were attracted 
to the synagogue. First, the converts who, by submitting to 
circumcision and so taking upon themselves the obligations 
of the Mosaic system, became full members of the Covenant. 
These proselytes, we may well conceive, were more zealous 
propagandists than Jews by birth, and were probably the 
bitterest opponents of the Christian mission. Secondly, the 
‘ Godfearers ’ who in a loose way connected themselves with 
the Jews, attended the services of the synagogue, observed 
Sabbaths, and in other ways imitated the Jews, but refused 


1 That there were exceptions is proved by the Jewish inscription in 
the theatre of Miletus: réos rav ’Hiovdéwy rav cal GeoreBlov (sic), Deissmann 
Licht, 4th ed. p. 3901. 

2 Cf. Hastings, D.B. extra vol. 1040. 

3 ‘ Transgressi in morem eorum idem usurpant’ (Tac. Hist. V. 5). 


JEWISH PROPAGANDA 27 


to submit to circumcision or to undertake the full obligation 
of the Mosaic law. These were the first to rush into the 
Christian Church, which declared that in Christ there was 
neither Jew nor Greek. Conversions caused just such family 
and social disturbances as we are familiar with in the 
early Christian mission. Families were divided. The 
pagan whose wife or son became attached to Judaism hated 
this proselytizing people, of whom Tacitus asserts that they 
inculcate nothing so much as ‘ to despise the gods, renounce 
one’s country, and hold parents and children and brothers 
as of no account.’! The heathen held the Jew in derision 
but could not thwart the Jewish mission. Tacitus, while 
speaking in the strongest terms of reproach of this genus 
hominum invisum deis, witnesses to its increase of converts. 
Juvenal* testifies to the number of those who by looking 
favourably on Judaism brought upon themselves the derision 
of their friends, while Seneca says that this cursed race, 
‘though conquered, imposed laws on its conquerors.’? 
John Hyrcanus forcibly proselytized the Idumaeans and 
Aristobulus the Itureans. The majority of the women of 
Damascus were addicted to the Jewish cult.4. The rapid in- 
crease of the Jewish population at Rome between the date 
of the earliest contact of the Romans and Jews—the 
embassy of Judas in 161 B.c.—and the first expulsion of the 
Jews from Rome by the praetor Hispalus in 139 B.c. was 
partly due to proselytizing which, according to Valerius 
Maximus,’ was commenced by those who came in the train 
of the embassies from Judaea.‘ 

The religious destitution of the Western peoples, the 
divorce between the religion of the State and that of the 
citizen, the taste for Oriental cults which seized the Greek 
world in the days of Alexander and the Roman world in 
the Second Punic War, facilitated the task of the Jewish 
missionaries. For this task the Jew was pre-eminently 


1 Tb. 2 Augustine, De Civ. Dei, VI. ii. 

2 Sat. XIV. 96 ff. SNM OSM Bape. 20,2 

5 I. 3,2; cf. Hastings, D.B. extra vol. p. 97 b. 

6 Cf. further, Jos. c. Apionem, II. 29; Philo, Vita Mosts, II. 4, C.—W. 
17 ff.; Horace, Sat. I. 4, 142 f.; Persius, Sat. V. 179-84. 


28 ORIENTATION 


qualified because of his adaptability to environment, his 
capacity for assimilating alien ideas without weakening his 
racial consciousness, or losing his ancestral faith, and his 
ability to turn to advantage every change of government 
or national fortune.1 Schiirer attributes the conspicuous 
| success of their propaganda to three main causes—first, 
\Jadaisn always presented its most attractive side to 
paganism ; secondly, it pursued the practical aim of securing 
a moral and happy life; thirdly, it profited by the general 
trend toward Oriental faiths in monotheism, in discovering 
a cathartic for sin, and in the promise of blessedness.* This 
mission made a threefold appeal—the general witness of a 
\moral people in the markets and in ordinary business, and 
that of the synagogue, the main focus of proselytism, and an 
energetic literary apologetic. 

The Jew was quick to realize that he was living in a world 
that had attained a remarkable degree of culture, and that - 
he must attempt to persuade thinkers as well as the thought- 
less masses. Hellenism was the heaviest counterweight to 
‘Judaism. In the Greek tongue spoken by all there was a 
religious and philosophical literature which he could not 
afford to overlook. When the merits of all the competing 
religious movements were being freely discussed the Jew 
was compelled to enter the lists for Judaism. Jewish literary 
propaganda was both offensive, directed against that 
idolatry which was always in Jewish eyes the chief sin of 
paganism, and defensive, demonstrative of the originality 
and priority of the Mosaic cult. The stock arguments of 
this apologetic were the divine origin of Judaism through 
supernatural revelation, its historicity, its antiquity, its 
impressive code of morality, and the coming of a future 
Deliverer to fulfil the promises. Its method was generally 
eclectic ; its main instrument, allegory. The authorship 
was of two kinds—pseudonymic, the nom de plume being 
chosen either from conspicuous pagan names or from worthies 

1 Cf. Legge, I. 150. 

2 Gesch, des jiid. Volkes, 4th ed. III, p. 155 ff. 


’ For Jewish apologetic cf. Schiirer, III. 545 ff. and Edersheim, art. 
Philo in Smith’s D.C.B. IV. 360 b. 





APOLOGETIC OF JUDAISM 29 


of Jewish history, and authentic authorship when the 
writers came out into the open. The book of Jonah, 
written at the end of the Persian or the beginning of the 
Greek period, was a tocsin to national proselytism. Among 
the earliest Jewish-Greek propagandist literature was the 
work of the eclectic Aristobulus, the first Judaeo-Greek 
philosopher. He too was apparently the first Jew to adopt 
that device of allegorical interpretation, which he applied 
alike to Jewish history and Greek philosophy. He claimed 
—a claim often repeated subsequently—that Greek philo- 
sophy took its rise from the fountain of Mosaism. The 
Hermippus ! who asserted that Pythagoras had borrowed 
from the Jews was probably a Jew. Pseudo-Aristeas simi- 
larly advocated the originality of the faith of the synagogue. 
By manipulation of the Sibylline oracles Jewish versifiers 
imposed upon the heathen by ostensibly citing their own 
poets and warning the Greeks that ‘the great-hearted 
Immortal One ’ would intervene, after signs in heaven and 
earth, through the Messiah to exalt the chosen race over 
Hellas. In the Wisdom of Solomon the futility of idolatry is 
shown, and both Jews and Gentiles are pointed to the source 
of all wisdom in the Law and the fear of God. Other 
examples are found in the Pseudo-Justinian Cohortatio ad 
Graecos and De Monarchia, and in the Contemplative Life 
of Philo. Josephus, indirectly in his Histories and especially 
in the contra A pionem, occupies an important place in Jewish 
apologetic, defending his faith against current calumnies and 
making prominent its chief attractions. 

Mention should be made of the momentous attempt to 
fuse Greek philosophy and Hebrew revelation at Alexandria, 
of which the outstanding figure, but not the first, was Philo. 
When we endeavour to reconcile in a synthesis the diverse 
faculties of our personality, when we seek to bring to- 
gether mysticism and knowledge, intuition and reason, objec- 
tive and subjective authority, when we hold fast God’s 
transcendence without exiling Him from His world, and God’s 
immanence without being engulfed in pantheism, when we 

1 Jos. c. Apionem, I. 22. 


30 ORIENTATION 


unite religion and culture, we are continuing the work which 
was commenced in the museums of Alexandria. The Jews 
of the Diaspora read Greek literature, spoke Greek, used 
Greek in the services of the synagogue and in family wor- 
ship,1 while the inquisitive Greeks were not averse to 
studying anewcult. These two spiritual forces, the religion 
of Israel and the thought of Greece, confronted each other in 
Alexandria, the capital of the Western Diaspora and of 
Hellenism, and the results of their interaction permeated 
the whole Mediterranean world. With enlarged sympathies 
Jew and Greek became eclectic. Both were propounding 
the same question: How does God come into relations with 
the world and men? Both applied the same method to 
modernize their traditions ; both were attempting to apply 
religion to life. 

The Jews whetted the appetite for Oriental faiths, while 
Judaeo-Hellenism fostered that religious syncretism in which 
the Oriental cults throve. In voluntary associations for the 
cultivation of personal religion,in appointed days for worship, 
in enthusiastic missionary impulse, in proclaiming the 
forgiveness of sins and offering the means of purification, in 
teaching the habit of prayer, in furnishing sacraments and 
holding out future rewards, in serving as a nexus between 
East and West, Judaism marched in line with the Mystery- 
Religions. 


IV. THE ROMANS IN CONTACT WITH THE EAST 


The contact of the Romans with Greece and the East, 
their religious condition during the centuries of their con- 
quests, and the moral effect of their victories were destined 
to have far-reaching results for the religious history of 
Europe. 

Rome became acquainted with Greek civilization in 
Magna Graecia from 281 B.c. onwards, and in the last quarter 
of the same century she interfered in the affairs of Greece. 
The victory of Cynoscephalae, 196 B.c., gave Rome the 
upper hand over Macedonia, and the victories of Thermo- 

1 Cf, Smith’s D.C.B. IV. 359 a. 


ROMAN RELIGION 3I 


pylae and Magnesia forced Antiochus of Syria to yield the 
hegemony in the Greek world to Rome. From this date 
Rome disposed of the countries of Asia Minor as she deemed 
best. Early in the first century B.c. her conquests brought 
her into conflict with the military power of Pontus, which 
issued in three Mithridatic wars. Mithridates, the protagon- 
ist of Orientalism against Western encroachments, was the 
predecessor of those rulers of Parthia and Persia who were 
to maintain the struggle with Rome until the fall of her 
empire. 

Roman religion was that of a practical, unimaginative, and 
patriotic! people, fostering domestic and civic virtues, 
and adapted to an agricultural society, but continually being 
overcome by ceremonial and elaborated by foreign accretions. 
It was essentially a family religion.2 Each family con- 
stituted a little church, on the religion of which that of the 
State was modelled. What was initially its strength—its 
intimate connexion with the political life—became its 
weakness on the degradation of religion into a part of the 
political machinery. Unlike the religion of Israel, that of 
Rome had never in it that vital principle of evolution which 
would enable it to meet the needs of different eras of spiritual 
experience. Consequently there was, to a far greater extent 
than in Greek religion, an atavism, or attempt to return 
to unintelligible formulae and customs of the past, while 
on the other hand the inadequacy of the Roman Numina 
was felt, and from the beginning of the sixth century B.c. 
onwards the Roman di indigetes were displaced by dz 
novensiles. Roman animism was displaced by Greek 
anthropomorphism. Aniconic powers became /fersons. 
Greek High Churchism, with its love of ritual and pomp, 
sacrament and aestheticism, encroached upon the simpler 
Roman cult. The foundation of the Capitoline temple in 
509 B.C. to the Trinity, Jupiter, O.M., Juno, and Minerva, 
marked a distinct epoch! by opening the floodgates of 

1 Cf. Mommsen, cited in Aust, Die Religion der Romer, p. 14. 


2 Cf. Giles, Rom. Civilization, p. 45. 
8 Wissowa, Iteligion u. Kultus der Romer, p. 34 0.; Aust, p. 48. 


32 ORIENTATION 


innovation. Etruscan and Greek rites and theology found 
entry ; the vitus graecus supplemented the ritus romanus. 
Early in this period, 496 B.c., belongs the first collection 
of the Sibylline Oracles, which were used by their custodian 
priests to introduce from time to time Greek and Oriental 
innovations. On their advice in 493, at a time of military 
disasters and famine, a temple was built in the Circus 
Maximus to the Greek Trinity, Demeter, Dionysus, Perse- 
phone, under the Latin names of Ceres, Liber, Libera. 
Through them too, in 431, the cult of Apollo, most typical 
of Hellenic deities, was introduced owing to a pestilence. 
In similar circumstances the Healing God, Aesculapius, 
became settled in Rome in 291. Previously the twin Greek 
deities, the Dioscuri, had found entry. At some uncertain 
date the Greek Hercules had been admitted to the Roman 
pantheon. 

The great crisis in Rome’s religion began during the 
Hannibalic Wars, which proved more disastrous to Roman 
religion and morality than the Peloponnesian War had been to 
Hellas. During this period 1 Rome’s spirituality reached its 
lowest ebb. The distress and terror caused by Hannibal, the 
thirst for conquest, the luxury arising from abundant 
spoliation, the civil wars with their proscriptions and con- 
fiscations, the tolerance of Greek thought, and infection 
of Greek scepticism, brought about a religious anaemia 
for which the state religion offered no remedy. Old Roman 
simplicity disappeared before boundless extravagance and 
heartless selfishness. Roman piety was buried under Greek 
culture. Political interests gained the right of way over 
religious interests because politics now opened the path to 
self-aggrandizement.? Henceforth the religion of the State 


1 The history of Roman religion falls into four clearly marked periods : 
(1) from the earliest times till the Capitoline temple, 509 B.c.; (2) from 
509 B.C. till Second Punic War, 218 B.c.; (3) from Second Punic War till 
end of the Republic, 218-31 B.c. ; (4) the imperial period. So, in general, 
Wissowa, Aust, Chantepie de la Saussaye, Fowler. 

2 “ Ancient venerable cult-usages surrounded the Roman religion with a 
strong dike, but the waves of the Hannibalic War overflowed it”’ (Aust, 
P. 59). 


FOREIGN INFLUENCES 33 


and that of the people go their own ways. Every effort was 
made to lessen the distance between the di indigetes and 
the di novensiles, but the former continue to retreat until 
they retain their place only so far as they have been identified 
with the foreign deities, or survive in the pages of poetry 
or in the lore of antiquarians. The laws were repealed 
to permit the settlement of peregrina numina within the 
precincts of the pomoerium. Some Roman auguria and 
haruspicia fell into desuetude. The masses paid no attention 
to the public divination, but had recourse to private con- 
sultations with Etruscan soothsayers or Eastern astrologians. 
Venerable priesthoods ceased through lack of candidates : 
national feasts were neglected or celebrated graeco ritu. 
Throughout this period we must distinguish the state 
religion, the religion of the educated, and popular super- 
stition. The first was cold and formal and, from the 
Second Punic War, had become an instrument of government 
in the hands of the nobility. Those entrusted with its 
administration, while recognizing its social value, no longer 
believed in it. Its observation was very perfunctory ; its 
ceremonies were often neglected. Even during the first 
Punic War Appius Claudius Pulcher had thrown the sacred 
fowls overboard before the battle of Drepanum because they 
refused to eat auspiciously, an act which the deity avenged. 
C. Flaminius, consul for 217, neglected the customary obser- 
vances before taking the field. Caesar makes no mention 
of divinatio in the history of his campaigns. The learned 
were sceptical about the value of the official religion. 
Scaevola, Pontifex Maximus in the first century B.c., enume- 
rates three kinds of gods: those of the poets, who are futile ; 
those of the philosophers, who do not suit the State owing 
partly to their being superfluous and partly to their being 
injurious to the people ; and those of the statesmen. Cato 
wondered how two haruspices ! could pass each other on the 
street without laughing at the inanity of their profession. 
Cicero was astonished that anyone could believe in the 
office of augur. The philosophies by which the educated 
1 Cicero, De Div. Il. 24, 51. 


4 


34 ORIENTATION 


were guided increased the scepticism. The populace, having 
lost faith in their ancestral gods, looked toward the East 
for the satisfaction of their yearnings. Popular religion, 
so long repressed, now welled up in an overflowing flood 
of superstition. It revealed itself in a strong desire to 
satisfy personal needs without reference to the State, in a 
new sense of sin which called for atonement, in a demand for 
union with the deity, which could then be accomplished only 
by the Mystery-Religions. 

In the stress of the Second Punic War the Senate 
recognized that the restless populace, depressed by defeats 
and with their imagination excited by prodigia, must be 
granted some means of religious support to maintain their 
morale. The masses must be amused while the State must 
make a show of keeping up its paternal interest by putting 
forward a popular cult and diverting their minds from 
disasters by imposing public spectacles. In reality the 
Senate was not guiding the people, but merely sanctioning 
the official entry of foreign cults to which the masses had 
betaken themselves. New Judi were added: henceforth 
there was a rapid growth both in the number and length of 
these religious festal days, which among other objects were 
intended to induce the people to look to the State for every- 
thing. In 217 lectisternia were decreed in honour of the 
twelve official Greek gods with whom the Roman gods 
were equated. Roman rites, a@ ver sacrum, and human 
sacrifice, were tried in vain. In 207 the Senate met the 
position created by Hasdrubal’s entry into Italy and the 
occurrence of a hermaphrodite birth at Frosinum by 
decreeing a grand festal procession in Greek style with a 
Latin hymn sung by a choir of twenty-seven maidens in 
honour of Juno. A momentous step was taken in 205—on the 
advice of the Sibylline books—the transportation of the black 
monolith of the Magna Mater from Pessinus. Livy marks 
the importance of this event by his detailed description of the 
solemn procession in which the noblest matrons and the 
whole body of citizens went forth to meet the new goddess 
and request her to enter the city garlanded in her honour. 


ROMAN SCEPTICISM 35 


In x91 a stately temple was dedicated to her on the 
Palatine. ‘‘ With the entry of the Magna Mater of Ida the 
orgiastic and enervating Oriental worship found entrance 
into Rome and took up its place within the pomoerium in 
the very heart of the city.’”’1 The Great Mother won her 
way to popular favour immediately and her worship whetted 
the appetite of the Romans for emotional cults. Rome’s 
interference in the affairs of the East, more energetic after 
the defeat of Carthage, brought her armies and merchants 
and officials increasingly into contact with that type of 
religion of which the Great Mother was the first example. 
The thousands of Orientals who travelled westward brought 
their mystery-gods with them. The multitudes of slaves 
from the East not only formed private religious associations, 
but became propagandists to their Roman masters. 

When the Romans went forth to conquer the earth, the 
Roman gods remained at home to be forsaken. When 
Rome became a world-power she was in a position similar 
to the Greeks when, under Alexander, they undertook the 
education of the world. The Romans, like the Greeks of a 
century and a half before, had lost faith in their national 
religion, while their faith in themselves increased. They 
were even in a worse position than the Greeks, since their 
religion made no appeal to the imagination by a rich 
mythology nor to the aesthetic taste by a pantheon of lovely 
anthropomorphic divinities. The ignorant had recourse 
to superstitions and foreign cults; the learned turned 
to foreign philosophies, the noblest form of which was 
that Stoicism of Roman type founded by Panaetius and 
Posidonfus, taught later by Seneca, and lived by Marcus 
Aurelius. In personal necessities men fled to strange 
gods. Religious indifference infected all ranks. A Pontifex 
Maximus questioned the very existence of the deities with 
whose cult he was entrusted. Roman audiences applauded 
the sentiment of Ennius that the gods live a careless existence 
heedless of mortal concerns, or approved of Euhemerus’ 
view that the gods were merely deified men. 

2 Aust, 2b. p. 64. 


36 ORIENTATION 


Early in this period Oriental mysticism and emotionalism 
had gained official entry, but not tothe liking of the governing 
orders. For at least a century the worship of foreign dei- 
ties was discouraged within the precincts of the pomoerium. 
Astrology, which in the second century B.c. was confined to 
the lower classes, won adherents in the next among the 
highest society.1 Political confusion and the increasing 
religious restlessness of the masses hastened the collapse of 
the Roman religion. Nonconformity grew apace toward 
the close of the republic. Rome had now gained the whole 
world and lost her own soul. 


| “How thoroughly religious sentiment had disappeared 
| from the heart at the end of the republic is evident from the 
‘fact that the leading men of the State did not hesitate to 
_scorn openly venerable usages in the most shameless fashion. » 

. We see the state religion degraded to a menial of 
politics, the educated filled with the spirit of unbelief, or of 
|Scepticism, the masses serving foreign gods or sunk in 
‘superstition. A degenerate age stands unintelligent before 
the ruins of its faith and the usages of its forbears. Such 
\is the picture of the religious condition of Rome about the 
itime when Jesus was born.’’? 


The fears of Varro had been realized : ‘ Dicat se timere ne 
pereant [dii] non incursu hostili sed civium neglegentia.’ § 

The imperial period is from the religious standpoint more 
interesting as marking the return of the Romans to religious 
earnestness. After the unspeakable suffering caused by the 
republican wars of conquest in the provinces, which fur- 
nished battle-fields for Roman civil strife, the whole world 
was weary of war and longed for a cessation of bloodshed 
and a return to settled social and economic conditions. 
Hence the rise of the empire was universally hailed as the 
dawn of a better era. The Pax Romana, the first settled peace 
since the days of Alexander’s conquests, called forth a chorus 
of profound thanksgiving, which in that age was necessarily 
of a religious character. Emperors were hailed as Saviours, 
sons of the Divine, Protectors of the human race. Incense 

1 Cf. Aust, p. 80. ® Aust, p. go. 3 Augustine, De Civ. Dei, VI. 2, 


REVIVAL OF RELIGION 37 


rose once more in peace from a thousand ruined altars. 
The imperial government was more at leisure to devote 
attention to the religious condition of the people. Augustus 
cleverly took advantage of the universal spirit of thanks- 
giving to foster a revival of religion in dynastic interests.? 
His religious reforms were dictated by a practical aim. 
He wished to impress upon all minds the superiority of one- 
man rule, to revive republican religious forms so as to 
conceal his own imperial position, and to unite Church and 
State in such a way as to subserve the unity of the State and 
foster loyalty to himself by giving to it religious sanction. 
Ruined temples were rebuilt, altars were repaired, religious 
endowments were restored, or payments made with princely 
generosity, priesthoods were elevated in rank, and vacant 
religious offices filled. In 13 B.c. Augustus took the title of 
Pontifex Maximus, which gave to his person a halo of sanctity 
and proved so effective that subsequent emperors, pagan 
and Christian, retained it. In 17 B.c., on his initiative, the 
magnificent ludi saeculares, for which Horace wrote the 
Carmen Saeculare, were celebrated with impressive solemnity. 

Men cannot long rest in unbelief or agnosticism. Every- 
where efforts were being put forth to find new religious 
supports and new objects of faith. MHence in the empire 
that religious syncretism, inaugurated by Alexander, 
increased in momentum until it reached its might in the 
third and early fourth centuries. The sense of sin, emerging 
during the Hannibalic struggle, grew more acute, and with 
it the demand for means of cleansing and expiation. Men 
were in search for salvation from whatever quarter. Rome 
had no Redemption-religion to offer, while Greece had been 
looking to the Orient or to her own philosophies now 
saturated with Orientalism. The Orientals were offering 
the dissatisfied Romans the religious comforts which they 
could not find elsewhere. 

The imperial era is marked by the rapid increase in the 
power and prestige of Eastern religions, most of which had 
been introduced under the republic either officially, like 

1 Cf. Chantepie de la Saussaye, p. 636. 


38 ORIENTATION 


that of the Great Mother, or illegally, like those of Isis, 
Serapis, and Mithra, Attachment to Oriental cults in the 
Republican period obtained, generally speaking, among 
the masses, and the spread of private associations was 
strenuously prohibited by the government.? 

Under the empire, excepting the reigns of Augustus and 
Tiberius, the situation is reversed, and Eastern religions 
ascend the imperial throne successively or simultaneously. 
Augustus and Tiberius shared the republican disinclination 
to the warmer and politically dangerous cults of the East. 
Though Egypt had become a province in 30 B.c. Augustus, 
in 28 B.c., ordered that all temples of Isis and Serapis should 
be outside the pomoerium, and his minister, Agrippa, in- 
hibited the celebration of the Isiac rites within one mile of 
the walls. In A.p. 19 Tiberius expelled Orientals, including 
Jews, from Rome, dismantled the temple of Isis, and 
instituted a bloody persecution against her devotees. But 
with the accession of Caligula the imperial policy changed 
in favour of Orientalism, until in 304 Mithra was declared 
Protector of the Empire, and in 321 the Galilean religion 
became the state religion. 

The rise of the empire promoted the growth of mono- 
theism because of the close relation between the form of 
religion and polity. One supreme ruler on earth made it 
natural and inevitable that men should believe in one 
Supreme Being in the universe. The empire also proved a 
levelling force in breaking down the racial and national and 
linguistic barriers, thereby promoting the idea of a common 
humanity, and it should be remembered that it was to man 
as man that Mystery-Religions and Christianity appealed. 
The paternal policy of the imperial government also released 
men from public affairs and afforded leisure for the culti- 
vation of personal interests for which the private religious 
associations of the Mystery-religions and Christianity 
catered. The general drift of the imperial era was toward 
Oriental ways. The empire thus brought the ancient world 
into a condition which made it a fertile soil for Eastern faiths. 

1 Cf. Boissier, La Religion romaine, II. p. 248 ff. 


CHAPTER II 


WHAT IS A MYSTERY-RELIGION ? 


PoBepot 5é Bporotcr uiPor 
Képdos mpos Gedy Oeparrelas, 
EuRIPIDES,. 
In spite of the fact that, since the publication of the pioneer 
work of Sainte-Croix in 1784 with revised edition bySilvestre 
de Sacy in 1817, Creuzer’s Symbolik in 1810, and especially 
of Lobeck’s Aglaophamus in Konigsberg in 1829, so much 
study has been devoted to the Mystery-Religions, it is very 
difficult to convey to modern minds an adequate idea of 
what a Mystery-Religion was in the Greek or Roman era.} 
Several causes contribute to this difficulty. In the very 
nature of the case the secrecy * to which initiates were pledged 
rendered it impossible for outsiders to become acquainted 
with the inner history of the religious societies : such history 
could be written only by those whose vows forbade them to 
divulge the mysteria. Of course, there were certain things 
in connexion with these cults which the members were 
allowed to publish as freely as they wished. Also, the 
adherents of the Mysteries, in daily contact with their 
fellow-men and actuated by a desire to make converts, 
discussed their religious views and pointed to some 
advantages of their worship. There was no injunction 
against referring to the blessedness accruing from initiation. 
There were also educated men like Plutarch, Porphyry, 
Iamblichus, Julian, and Proclus, who had partaken of the 
sacraments of the Mysteries and expressed the religious ideas 

1 For the various opinions regarding the nature of the ‘ Mystery,’ cf. 
Macchioro, Zagreus, p. 185, and his criticisms in Orfismo e Paolinismo, 
pp. 119-45 (L’Essenza del Mistero). 

2 Cf. Lysias, c. Andoc., 104; Cic. N.D. III. 37; Lobeck, Aglaophamus, 
pp. 67 ff., 1202 ff.; Dibelius, Die Isisweihe in Sitzb. d. Heid. Akad. ’17, 
p-. 15 ff.; Anrich. 31 f. 

39 


40 WHAT IS A MYSTERY-RELIGION ? 


of those Mysteries in their philosophic teaching without 
disclosing the details of initiation. Some features of the 
religious guilds and of the lives of their members were patent 
to all; e.g. that there was at least in some of the cults a more 
or less regular congregational worship, that there was a strong 
bond of fellowship among the members which made the bur- 
dens of life more tolerable, that the guild was supported 
by the free-will offerings of its members, that they had 
sometimes a common burial-ground, etc. The mystae were 
apparently permitted to confess their faith publicly in 
certain symbola, or signa. Such formulae, accessible to, 
e.g. Demosthenes, Clement of Alexandria, or Firmicus 
Maternus, betrayed neither the ritual nor liturgy, nor the 
nature and use of the sacra, and were unintelligible except 
to those equipped with the mystery gnosis. ‘ I have become 
a mystes of Attis ’ would reveal no more to the outsider than 
the confession ‘ Jesus is Lord ’ would convey of the inner 
meaning of the agape. Apuleius’ procedure is instructive. 
Having asserted that he dare not disclose quid deinde dictum, 
deinde factum in his initiation at Cenchreae, he repeats a 
long symbolum (Acesst confinium Mortis, etc. XI. 23) and 
then informs the reader, ‘ Behold, I have told you things of 
which, although you have heard them, you cannot know 
the meaning.’! Only to the Orphic mind would ‘A kid, I 
fell into milk’ speak of mystic identification with Dionysos 
Eviphos, of resurrection and rebirth.2 Yet we are in a 
worse position with regard to these ancient cults than a 
present-day historian would be in regard to Freemasonry. 
A mason may not disclose the secrets, while an outsider 
could record only such usages of Freemasonry as are obvious 
to all or such features as are openly spoken of by the 
brotherhood. 

We have extant but a few literary works dealing with 
the Mysteries, many scattered references, verses of poetry, 


1 Cf, his request at his trial for magic practices to a possible fellow 
initiate, ‘signum dato’ (‘let him repeat the formula’) with his ‘ for my 
part I shall be forced by no possible danger to disclose to the uninitiated 
what I received under vow of secrecy’ (Apologia, 56). 

* Cf, Macchioro, Zagreus, pp. 80-6. 


ANCIENT SOURCES 41 


fragments of hymns and prayers, mutilated inscriptions, 
damaged papyri, cult emblems, bas-reliefs, frescoes, painted 
vases, ruined chapels and temples. These are the varied 
and imperfect material out of which we have to attempt 
reconstruction. Our difficulties are much heightened by the 
insecurity of chronological sequence, and the uncertainty 
as to the particular usages or beliefs of a cult at a particular 
period of the long history of the Mystery-Religions from the 
sixth century B.c. to the fifth century a.p. During the 
centuries from Alexander the Great until Constantine these 
Mysteries have undergone marvellous remodelling to adapt 
them, as they were constantly adapted, to the demands of 
the day. Further, when literary notices, inscriptions, and 
monuments begin to increase in volume, the Mysteries have 
each and all been affected by religious syncretism in doctrine 
and cult, and so, by borrowings and mutual interaction, have 
approximated to each other so as to be in many respects 
indistinguishable. 

Another problem is that of reconciling our fragmentary 
notices in any reconstruction. Some of our information 
comes from sympathetic sources, some from sources avowedly 
hostile, and some from professed apologists of the Mysteries. 
Christian iconoclasm not only destroyed the shrines, over- 
threw the altars, and effaced, as far as possible, all trace of 
the literature and liturgy of the Mysteries, but, in their 
apologetic, Christian writers represented, or rather mis- 
represented, the Mystery-cults in such a way that one is 
sometimes compelled to question how these ever exercised 
such a potent spell over ancient religious minds. Ancient 
writers} are not agreed as to the effects of initiation, 
though the majority maintain that participation in the 
Mysteries was salutary. Indeed, it would have been no 
easy task even for an ancient adherent to give an account 
of his cult which would have been accepted by his ‘ brothers,’ 
because the Mysteries were so indefinite in form and vague 
in outlook that much was left to the individual imagination. 
Hence the ancient worshipper found in his Mystery- 

1 Cf. Creuzer, Symbolik, p. 849 f. 


42 WHAT IS A MYSTERY-RELIGION ? 


Religion what he sought! or what he brought to it. Of 
these, as of all religious observances, we may say, with 
Goethe : 

“Ein jeder sieht was er im Herzen tragt.’’ 

Men entered the Mystery-cults for different purposes : 
there were all degrees of belief and unbelief, morality and — 
laxity, mysticism and realism. The carnal could find in 
orgiastic processions and midnight revels opportunities for 
self-indulgence ; the superstitious would approach because 
of the magical value attributed to the formulae and sacra- 
ments ; the educated could, in the material and physical, 
perceive symbols of the truth dear to his heart ; the ascetic 
would look upon initiation as a means of buffeting his body 
and giving freedom to the spirit; the mystic would in 
enthusiasm or ecstasy enjoy the beatific vision by entering 
into communion with God or by undergoing deification. 
Then, as always, ‘many are the wandbearers, but few 
are the mystae.’ This divergence in the point of view of 
the epoptae was easy because of the heterogeneous elements, 
or perhaps, rather, the various strata of religious history 
embedded in the Mysteries. Every note in the religious 
gamut might be struck, from the crassest materialism of 
Phrygia to the purest yearnings of Neo-Platonism. The 
Mysteries had a sensuous and at times even a sensual side, * 
but they could never have entered into competition with 
Christianity had they not also presented a pronounced 
religious character. Freed from the national and political 
restraints of the state churches, they in a wonderful measure 
adapted themselves to the needs of every age by casting off 
what was repulsive or flagrantly offensive ; but they never 
succeeded in wholly divesting themselves of primitive 
naturalism and the magic in which superstition throve. 

History cannot give us back the psychology of those who 
assembled for matins or vespers at the shrine of Isis, who 
took part in the orgiastic processions of Cybele, who met in 
silent contemplation in the Mithraic chapel, who pored deep 
over the Hermetic Revelation in quest of a satisfying know- 

1 So Philo, De Vita Cont. p. 473 M., C.-W. 12. 


LOWLY ORIGIN OF THE MYSTERIES 43 


ledge of God. Anthropology and the science of Comparative 
Religion have come to our aid, and historic study has guided 
us by showing how essentially modern was the Graeco-Roman 
epoch in its strivings and intuitions. We may, therefore, 
with a considerable measure of assurance, trace our way 
backwards from the religious psychology of our own day, 
and in the light of it read the sacred liturgies of the past. 

The Mystery-Religions offer a fascinating study ! for those 
who believe that ‘‘ through the ages one increasing purpose 
runs,’ and that the march of mankind is Godward. This 
study reveals that on the larger view the spiritual prevails, 
that there is in man a religious instinct the satisfaction of 
which but quickens that instinct and lays bare the greater 
need, that there is a native idealism and spirituality in our 
being which transmutes the crudest acts of worship into 
uplifting sacraments, and which leaves behind rude natur- 
alism to behold in the material symbols of the divine. 

The Mystery-Religions were lowly and simple enough in 
their origin. They arose from the observation of the patent 
facts of recurring death and subsequent rebirth in nature, 
and from the attempt to see in these alternations of winter 
and spring, decay and generation, sunset and sunrise, a 
symbol of the life and hope of man and a replica of the divine 
life, which in primitive thought was conceived merely as 
the all-vitalizing energy resident in nature. Their origin 
belongs apparently to a remote period of civilization which 
was pastoral rather than agricultural. Two centres of the 
ancient Mysteries, the wild plateau of Phrygia with its 


1 Cf. the judgment of Sir W. M. Ramsay, “. . . The elaborate and 
artificial products of a diseased religion. . . . The development has been a 
depravation”’ (Hastings’ D.B. ex. vol. p. 124 a), with his more favourable 
judgment in C. and B. I. p. 92f.: ‘‘ The Oriental, and especially the 
Phrygian, Mysteries met the natural and overwhelming desire for a rational 
system by their teaching of the divine unity-in-multiplicity. . . . The 
Phrygian Mysteries must always remain one of the most instructive and 
strange attempts to frame a religion, containing many germs of high 
conceptions expressed in the rudest and grossest symbolism, deifying the 
natural processes of life in their primitive nakedness, and treating all 
that veiled or modified or restrained or directed these processes as im- 
pertinent outrages of man on the divine simplicity.” 


44 WHAT IS A MYSTERY-RELIGION 2? 


emotionalism, and Thrace, the homeland of the Dionysiac- 
Orphic Mysteries, have exercised an enormous influence in 
the religious history of Europe. 

There’ were probably four stages in the history of the 
Mysteries from the earliest naturalistic period to their 
popularity and imperial recognition in the Roman Empire. 
(1) There was a time when the Mysteries, in their crudest 
form, were not ‘ mysteries ’ for initiates only, but were the 
religion of a whole pastoral or primitive agricultural people.! 
(2) A period during which this primitive religion, with 
necessary modifications, was the religion of the lower stratum 
of population which adhered to the customs of the auto- 
chthons. This lower stratum would be the aborigines who 
survived the successive waves of conquest.* (3) A period 
during which the Mysteries were the concern of private 
religious associations, which might be dated from the first 
introduction of Orphic cults into the Greek world until the 
reign of Caligula. These thiasoi, or sodalitates, though they 
represent what Gardner has called “‘ Hellenic Noncon- 
formity,’’ did not necessarily refuse conformity with the 
national public worship, but found their chief religious 
activity in the small brotherhoods. During this period they 
attracted, on the whole, the lower orders and the foreign 
population. They were legally on the footing of religiones 
licitae. (4) The imperial period. Though Augustus 
favoured the cult of the Great Mother, he and Tiberius were 
not well disposed toward Oriental religions. With Cali- 
gula’s dedication of a temple to Isis Campensis, and more 
particularly from the accession of the Flavian emperors, 
the Oriental religions came into universal favour until under 
the Syrian emperors they were elevated to the rank of state 
religions. What were once local worships cultivated in private 
associations became universal religions, only that men were 
not born into them but entered by an initiation, or rebirth. 


1 “In primitive religion all men were religious, and mysteries were the 
religion of the whole people, and not confined to chosen mystae’”’ (Ramsay, 
124 a,1b. Cf. Farnell, Cults, III, p. 132). 

4 Cf. Gardner, Relig. Exper. of St. Paul, p. 58 f. 


SYMBOLISM OF THE MYSTERIES 45 


Turning now to the prominent features of a Mystery- 
Religion, we may say that a Mystery-Religion was (I) a 
religion of symbolism which, through myth and allegory, 
iconic representations, blazing lights and dense darkness, 
liturgies and sacramental acts, and suggestion quickened 
the intuitions of the heart, and provoked in the initiate a 
mystical experience conducing to palingenesia (regeneration), 
the object of every initiation. In such symbolism was 
removed the offence of what were originally vulgar tokens 
of life and generation and birth, tokens which received a 
spiritual meaning consonant with the stage of moral 
education reached by the age. This in itself not only 
marked a stage in moral evolution, but pointed, vaguely 
it is true, toward that modern view of the world in 
which the spiritual interpenetrates and unites all things. 
In every religion ritual precedes symbol and symbol 
precedes language and prompts the articulation of feel- 
ings and needs so vague for the time being as to elude 
expression. In the symbolism of the Mysteries, often 
unintelligible and sometimes offensive to us, men were 
blindly grasping for the truth and reality of things. 
The imagination was quickened and deep emotions were 
stirred, which might lead the spiritual Godwards and might 
at the same time be the occasion to the unspiritual of 
moral aberrations or fruitless psychopathic conditions. 
Language is at best only an inadequate expression of spiritual 
experience, as mystics in all ages testify, and has often to 
take refuge in metaphor or to apply the speech of daily life 
in a domain for which it is inadequate. Symbolism may 
convey to mind and heart the significance of impalpable 
experiences and so hasten the formation of a religious 
phraseology. In this respect the Mysteries promoted 
religious growth. Thus, in lustrations with water, the 
ancient saw the sacramental cathartic which washed away 
his sins and opened the way to approach the deity.1| In 
the enacted passion-drama of the resurrection of Osiris 


1 Lustrations were originally not symbolic at all, but exorcistic or 
apotropaic. 


46 WHAT IS A MYSTERY-RELIGION ? 


the initiate read the promise of his own triumph over death : 
‘as truly as Osiris lives shall he live; as truly as Osiris is 
not dead shall he not die.’ The cult meal was in some 
mystic sense a means of communion with the deity. In the 
bath in bull’s blood (¢aurobolium) the participant believed 
that through the impartation of the divine life he was ‘ born 
again for eternity.’ The soldier of Mithra in silent con- 
templation of the tauroctony1 read his own conquest over 
the ills of life, and especially over the darkness of death. 

‘ All things are opposite the one to the other ’ was a prin- 
ciple universally observed by the ancient worshipper of 
the Mysteries. To understand the Mysteries we must 
endeavour to recapture the ancient mind which in religious 
matters expressed itself spontaneously in symbolism where 
we would speak more concretely. The line of demarcation 
between symbol and fact, the objective and subjective, 
was not distinctly drawn. In fact in ancient realism * 
the identity of subjective and objective was not questioned. 
If the writer of our ‘ spiritual gospel,’ distinguished for the 
spirituality of his treatment of Baptism and the Eucharist, 
does not strictly discriminate between the outward ritual 
and the inner experience, it is not astonishing that adherents 
of the Mysteries failed to separate the physical and the 
spiritual. 


“The contradiction which our analytic thought is accus- 
tomed to find between the nature of an inner spiritual 
process and its mediation through an outward sensible act, 
has for ancient thought in general, and the period of the 
Mysteries in particular, no existence. Instead, we may say, 
that our difficulties on this point would have been quite 
unintelligible to the men of that time, for it appeared to them 
self-evident that a real inward experience must also be 


1 Cf. Statius, Theb. I. 717 fi. 

2 “ E indiscutibile che il popolo greco non supero mai completamente i 
confini della mentalita prelogica e non arrivO se non in eta tarda, dopo 
Platone, a una mentalita razionale vera e propria. Nella filosofia greca 
bisogna scendere fino agli stoici per trovare la distinzione ovvia per noi, 
di rappresentazione subbiettiva e obbiettiva ’’ (Macchioro, Zagreus, p. 165 ; 
cf. Orfismo e Paolinismo, p. 159 ff.) 


MATERIALISTIC PANTHEISM 47 


visibly represented by a corresponding outward event, 
and that just in this mystic interplay of inward and outward 
consisted the significance of all cultus-ceremonies,’’ 4 


A splendid example of the idealizing power of religious 
symbolism is presented in the treatment of the Zagreus- 
myth of the wild Thracian Dionysiac religion by the Orphic 
Mysteries. No more unpromising material could have been 
chosen than this repulsive story, which, told in various forms, 
represents Zeus as seducing in the form of a serpent his 
‘only-born ’ daughter, Persephone, from which amour was 
born the Cretan Dionysus-Zagreus with the horns of a bull. 
This infant god, destined by his father to be world-ruler, 
was kidnapped by the envious Titans, sons of Earth, torn 
limb from limb, cooked and eaten. His heart, rescued by 
Athene, was brought to Zeus, by whom it was swallowed, 
and became reborn as the Theban Dionysus, son of Zeus and 
Semele. Zeus then blasted with lightning the earth-born 
Titans, from whose ashes arose mankind, The Orphics 
moralized this myth into a symbol of man’s composite 
nature, consisting of the evil, or Titanic, elements and the 
divine or Dionysiac elements. From the former man must, 
through self-renunciation, liberate himself and return to 
God, with whose life he may be united. The body is the 
tomb of the soul: salvation consists in rescuing the divine, 
Dionysiac, spark from the enveloping evil matter, and so 
securing escape from the round of reincarnation to which 
the soul is subject. 

There were two factors in particular which abetted the 
symbolism of the Mysteries, and both factors, most pro- 
nounced in Stoicism, attained a powerful influence in 
Hellenistic-Oriental theology—materialistic pantheism or 
divine immanence, and allegorical interpretation. 

i. The Stoics, in their efforts to conceive the unity of all 
things, produced a strange materialistic pantheism according 
to which the divine interpenetrated all in such a way as to 
admit of no essential difference between God and the World. 


1 Pfleiderer, Primitive Christianity, Eng. tr. IV, p. 231. 


48 WHAT IS A MYSTERY-RELIGION ? 


Cornutus, in his Compendium of Greek Theology, says: 
‘just as we ourselves are controlled by a soul, so the world 
possesses a soul holding it together, and this soul is designated 
God, primordially and ever living and the source of all life.’ 


“We can therefore think of nothing which is not either 
immediately deity or a manifestation of deity. In point 
of essence God and the World are therefore the same. .. . 
The same universal Being is called God when it is regarded 
as a whole, World when it is regarded as progressive in one 
of the many forms assumed in the course of development.” ® 


As a result of this immanent unity there is a natural 
correspondence, or ‘sympathy ’ among all things. Epic- 
tetus * asks, ‘Don’t you think that all things have been 
brought into a unity?’ ‘Certainly.’ ‘ Well, don’t you 
suppose that the things of earth are in sympathy with the 
things of heaven?’ ‘ Yes.’ The elements are shot through 
by the Spermatic Logos, or Generative Reason, and become 
divine by the interpenetrating attenuated fiery breath. 
This Stoic view is expressed in such a line as 


‘ Juppiter est quodcunque vides, quodcunque sentis,’ 


and by Virgil: 


‘Deum namque ire per omnis 
Terrasque tractusque maris caelumque profundum ; 
Hinc pecudes, armenta, vires, genus omne et ferarum, 
Quemque sibi tenues nascentem arcessereé vitas, 
Scilicet huc reddi deinde ac resoluta referri 
Omnia, nec morti esse locum, sed viva volare 
Sideris in numerum atque alto succedere caelo.’ 4 


With this pantheism Posidonius linked a semi-philo-_ 
sophical, semi-astrological doctrine of nature-mysticism ‘ 
which never died out of ancient theology. According to this 
Posidonian conception, men have in themselves the same 


1 Lang’s ed. (Teubner, 1881) ch. ii.; cf. Cic. N.D. 1. 14, 37. 

® Zeller, Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics, p. 157 f. 

S Disvlita, ts. 

* Georg. IV. 221 ff; 

® Cf. quotation from Posidonius in Sext. Empir. Math. VII. 93. 


ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATION 49 


“elements ’ which exist in principle in the deity and through 
which they are in ‘sympathy ’ with the deity. Wherefore 
the religious mind is quickened to perceive that ‘ the things 
of earth are in sympathy with the things of heaven,’ that 
the natural is but the manifestation of the divine, and that 
through the contemplation of material objects, especially 
the heavenly bodies,t the soul may be elevated toward 
God. The writer of the Fourth Gospel, familiar with these 
views, says, ‘if I spoke to you about things on earth, and 
you do not believe, how will you believe if I speak to you 
about things in heaven ?’* Herein we find an anticipation 
of the words from the mystic chorus of Faust: 


“Alles Verganglich 
Ist nur ein Gleichnis.”’ 


2. The Mysteries preserved much in ritual that was 
archaic, the original significance of which was lost in 
antiquity and the prima facie character of which was 
repulsive to a developing ethic. In order to retain these 
elements it was necessary to have recourse to allegory. 
This method of interpretation arose among the Greeks 
and the Jews from the same cause—the maturer moral 
sense,* which revolted against the literalism of some stories 
in their religious classics: ‘“‘ In the absence of any kind of 
historic sense, it was perhaps the only way in which the 
continuity of religious thought could then be maintained.” 4 
Allegory was the application of philosophy to mythology, 
which sought in the myths, however crude, a hidden spiritual 
meaning. Allegory was probably developed earlier among 
the Greeks than among the Jews. The Stoics, deriving 
this method from the Cynics, brought it to perfection as a 
theological weapon, by means of which they were able to 
conserve the form of popular religion while transforming the 
content. We have abundant examples of the employment 
of allegory, e.g. in Cornutus’ Compendium of Greek Theology 


1 Cf. Cumont, Mysticisme Astrale, p. 262 ff. 

2 Cf. Origen’s statement of the law of correspondence, In Cant. Cant. 
(Lom. xv. 48). 

3 Cf. Dill, pp. 422-3. 4 Glover, p. 184. 


5 


50 WHAT IS A MYSTERY-RELIGION ? 


and in the probably pseudonymous Homeric Allegorves.* 
In Plutarch’s essay, On Isis and Osiris, the most common- 
place myth is by the use of allegory tuned to lofty morality. 
Similarly, Maximus of Tyre can use the crassest myths to 
suggest the purest spirituality. How early the allegoric 
method was adopted by the Jews it is difficult to determine 
with certainty. It certainly would be in demand as early 
as the translation of the Septuagint in Egypt. Aristobolus 
used it freely in his exposition of the Pentateuch, and 
Schiirer believes that allegoric exegesis was in vogue in 
Palestine a considerable time before the days of Philo,* 
who applied it wholesale to the Hebrew Scriptures. He was 
followed by Paul, through whom allegory entered upon its 
long career in Christian theology. 

The allegorical method enabled writers to link the present 
with the past ; it could bring any ritual or drama into line 
with current ethics. It utterly ignored the intention of the 
writer or the original and obvious significance of a mystery 
ceremonial, and replaced these by the reader’s or observer’s 
own interpretation. It idealized what was said into what 
should have been intended. Abundant scope was afforded 
to this prevalent allegorism by the symbolism of the 
Mysteries.? 

II. A Mystery-Religion was a religion of Redemption 
which professed to remove estrangement between man and 
God, to procure forgiveness of sins, to furnish mediation. 
Means of purification and formulae of access to God, and 
acclamations of confidence and victory were part of the 
apparatus of every Mystery. It is necessary here to dwell 
only briefly on this aspect of the Mysteries which made them 
so popular. We must recall the intellectual and spiritual 
perplexities of those who lived in the Graeco-Roman age 
in order to understand the religious refuges to which they 
fled ; we must understand the heavy burdens which they 

1 Ed. by Mehler (Leiden, 1851). 

2 Gesch. des jud. Volkes (3rd—4th ed.), III, p. 702. 

8 Cf. Hatch, Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages, p 39. Bacon’s Wisdom 


of the Ancients, and Ruskin’s Queen of the Airy give the reader unfamiliar 
with Greek a fairly adequate idea of the ancient hermeneutics. 


REDEMPTION-RELIGIONS 51 


sought to lay down in the shrines of the Oriental cults. 
Life was threatened and made wretched by the tyranny of 
Fate, the caprice of Fortune, the malice of ubiquitous 
demons, the crushing weight of Astralism, the dread of 
Magic, the deepening sense of sin (which was part of the 
Orientalization of the Western mind), and the mystery of 
Death. The first thing that Alexander the Great did in 
Babylon was to consult the Chaldaei.1 Men and women 
moved nervously in a world where at any moment they 
might fall under the evil of sorcery. Pliny * informs us 
that there was no one who did not dread being bewitched. 
F. C. Burkitt calls attention to a homily,’ written probably 
by Isaac of Antioch (A.D. 450), who complains that Christian 
people and clergy alike, 


‘Instead of the blessings of the saints, lo, they carry 
about the incantations of the magicians ; and instead of the 
holy cross, lo, they carry the books of devils... one 
carries it on his head, another round his neck, and a child 
carries about devils’ names and comes [to church].’ 


Now, the propagandists of the Mysteries never denied the 
reality and terrors of magic, but professed to impart the 
correct name of a deity or precise formulae to thwart 
incantations. Similarly, Fate might not be wholly evaded, 
but by union with the mystery-gods its blows would not 
crush man. The initiate of the gods could not be over- 
whelmed by Fatum irrevocabile or by Fors inopinata, for 
the mystery-gods were lords of the baleful powers. Deliver- 
ance from malefic demons was found in becoming a devotee 
of a deity more potent than they. Even the planets, which 
exercised such a momentous influence over man’s destiny, 
lost much of their terror when the mystery-deity became a 
heavenly deity, with whom the soul of the deceased initiate 
would mount through all the spheres to the highest heaven. 


1 Arr. Anab. III. 16.5; Q. Curtius, V. 3. 
2 H.N. XXVIII. 4. 
8 Proc. Soc. Bib. Arch., 1901, p.77. Cf. Le Blant, L’accusation de magie 


divigée contre les premiers chrétiens in Mém. de la Soc. des antiq. de France, 
XXXI. 


52 WHAT IS A MYSTERY-RELIGION ? 


The mystery ritual supplied for distressed consciences 
a cathartic to remove the stain of sin. The mystes did not 
die without hope. He believed that in some mysterious way 
he was brought in initiation into fellowship with the eternal 
life of his god ; he not only saw in the death and resurrection 
of the cult-deity a symbol of his own deathlessness, but also 
experienced a real inner henosis.1 These redemption- 
religions thus promised salvation and provided the 
worshipper with a patron deity in life and death. This 
salvation consisted in release from the tyranny of Fate, 
alleviation from the burdens and limitations of existence, 
comfort in the sorrows of man’s lot, a real identification with 
his god guaranteeing palingenesia (rebirth), and hope 
beyond. We should judge of this aspect of the Mysteries by 
the language of the hymns and prayers? of the devotees, 
rather than by our modern views. In every act of worship 
the blessing is ‘ according to your faith.’ 

III. The Mystery-Religions were systems of Gnosis akin, 
and forming a stage to, those movements to which the name 
of Gnosticism became attached. They professed to satisfy 
the desire for the knowledge of God which became pro- 
nounced from at least the second century B.c. and increased 
in intensity until the acme of syncretism in the third and 
fourth centuries of our era. The Mysteries brought men into 
contact with that god ‘who wishes to be known and is 
known to his own.’ They offered an esoteric equipment by 
which the initiate might ward off the attacks of demons, 
thwart the menace of Fate, and after death reach the abodes 
of the blessed mysteries. There was something, whether 
doctrine, symbol, or divine drama, which could not be 
imparted except by initiation to those duly qualified to 
receive, a supernatural revelation which gave the recipient 
a new outlook upon life, the world, and the deity, and a 
security denied to the uninitiated. The ‘mystery’ con- 


1 Cf. Macchioro, Zagreus, p. 159 ff. 

2 See pp. 99, 119, 139, 230, 238 ff., 263. 

3 Usener attributes the beginning of the Gnostic movement to the 
propaganda and syncretism of the Oriental cults (Wethnachtsfest, 2nd ed., 
p- 25 f£.). * Corp. Herm. I. 31. 


RELIGION OF GNOSIS 53 


sisted in an objective presentation of the history of the 
cult-deity in his or her struggles, sorrows, and triumphs, 
repeated subjectively by the initiate in sacramental acts 
together with prayers and liturgic formulae, or it was a 
profound intuition of the ‘ Spirit in Love,’ or foretaste of 
that mystic experience in which ‘we know as we are 
known,’ in the progressive satisfaction of the two eternal 
passions of selfhood—the desire for Love and also for Know- 
ledge. The ‘ secret,’ when imparted, rendered men superior 
to all the trials of life and ensured salvation. 

There were many grades of Mysteries, some of which were 
crude and almost wholly symbolic, with but little doctrine, 
and in which rerum magis natura cognoscitur quam deorum,} 
while others provided a more elaborate liturgy and a fuller 
theology. A considerable distance separated popular magic, 
which was the Gnosis of the masses,? from the cult of Isis, 
whose name was a favourite among magicians and in whose 
cult magic was freely employed; and again there is a 
considerable step from the Isiac religion which moved among 
demonic hierarchies to the Hermetic, which undertook to 
‘preach to men the beauty of Knowledge,’* and in which 
Gnosis is ‘ the religion of the Spirit (Nous),’ and as such is 
synonymous with ‘the vision of things divine.’4 Every 
Mystery-Religion imparted a ‘ secret,’ a knowledge of the life 
of the deity and the means of union with him. There was 
a sacred tradition of ritual and cult usages expounded by 
hierophants and handed down by a succession of priests or 
teachers. Plato informs us that the Orphic mysteries 
promised escape from ills beyond death and foretold an awful 
future for the uninitiated.’ Sophocles likewise limits eternal 
felicity to initiates.’ The adherents of the Mysteries pitched 
their claims high, and their faith in the possession of an 
esoteric doctrine and way of salvation was not the smallest 
factor in the success of their propaganda. They struck the 
chords of both hope and terror in the heart of man. 


1 Cic. N.D, 1. 42, 119. * Corp. Herm. IV. 6. 
2 Cf. Dieterich, Abraxas, p. 2. 5 Repub. 365, A. 
3 Poim. I. 26. ® Frag. 719 Dind., 348 Didot. 


54 WHAT IS A MYSTERY-RELIGION ? 


In pointing the way of communion with deity in a 
‘mystery,’ the Mystery-Religions were preparing the way 
for the orientalization of the Western religious thought 3 
known as Gnosticism; but also,as religion became universally 
recognized as a definite Gnosis, they accommodated them- 
selves to this new demand. In the prevalent syncretism the 
Mysteries approached in varying degrees the religious 
movements and revivals called Gnostic, so dissimilar in 
many aspects, but all linked together by the identification 
of religion with ‘ Knowledge’ (Gnosis, not émucTnun, con- 
ceptual knowledge) or rather, that view of religion which 
gave to Knowledge a central place in asserting the realization 
of deity by union, not by faith. Common to the Mysteries 
and Gnosticism were certain ideas, such as pantheistic 
mysticism, magic practices, elaborate cosmogonies and 
theogonies, rebirth, union with God, revelation from above, 
dualistic views, the importance attaching to the names and 
attributes of the deity, and the same aim at personal salva- 
tion. As Gnosticism took possession of the field East and 
West, the Mysteries assumed an increasingly gnostic 
character. The dividing line is sometimes difficult to 
determine. Thus, Hermetic may be viewed as a Mystery- 
Religion or as a phase of Gnosticism. 

This aspect of the Mysteries brings us in touch with a 
factor in the development of the Western religious thought 
of far-reaching influence in the history of the Mysteries, 
Christianity, and philosophy, namely, the belief that God is 
unknown save so far as He manifests Himself in special 
revelation to faith ; that, defying comprehension and being 
far above man, He is apprehended only by an ineffable 
mystic experience and passive attitude of the soul. This 
was no less than an Oriental reaction against the epistemology 
of the West.’ 

Behind the expression ‘ to know God ’ or ‘ the knowledge of 
God,’ so familiar to us, there lies a long history, during which 


1 Cf. Mead, Quests Old and New, p. 182. 
2 Cf. Clem. Alex. Strom. VII. 11. 68, % aywwrdrn x. xupwwrarn macns 
émioriuns dyadmrn (‘The most holy and potent of all knowledge is Love’). 


PLATO—POSIDONIUS—PHILO 55 


Orient and Occident gradually approached in their thinking 
until the Occident adopted the point of view of the Orient. 
Greek Intellect and Oriental Revelation, the lay and the 
sacerdotal, met, and as a result the world became convinced 
of the need of a Revelation, but not without some modifica- 
tion of the conception of revelation. 

In Hellenic thought God was neither ‘ unknown’ nor 
‘unknowable,’ since the Greek intellect believed that it 
could penetrate the adyta of all knowledge, and since, being 
essentially pantheistic, it saw God in the world and the world 
as the sensible manifestation of a God that could be com- 
prehended by reason (vonrds eds), But as weariness 
overtook Hellenic thought and it gave way to Hellenistic, 
as the nature and certainty of knowledge were doubted, 
and as scepticism as to the ability of reason to attain 
ultimate reality gained ground, the demand for authority 
and for revelation, or ‘a sure word,’ increased. This 
momentous outlook dawned only gradually,* and with it the 
conviction that ‘‘ the yva@ous Peod cannot be an acquisition 
of the intellect, but a gift of God’s grace to a soul conscious 
of its sinfulness, and therefore, receptive of divine grace.”’§ 
The time had arrived when, in the words of Seneca, 
adscendentibus Di manum porrigunt, 

Three men stand out conspicuously in this epoch-making 
transition from Western to Eastern religious conceptions— 
Plato, Posidonius, and Philo. Plato, though admitting 
that the Creator and Father of the world is apprehensible 
by thought,‘ yet asserts ‘ to discover the Maker and Father 
of this universe is both an arduous task, and, having dis- 
covered Him, it is impossible to speak of Him to all.’ This 
warning of a master-mind of Greece, and one whose thought 
entered into every subsequent religious and philosophical sys- 
tem of the Graeco-Roman world, was prophetic. It seemed 
to suggest that to find God or speak of Him was not the 
prerogative of every man, but required special qualifications. 
This, taken with Plato’s view of the need of a safe raft 


‘ Cf. Reitzenstein, Poim. p. 158 f. 3 Ibid. p. 87. 
2 Cf. Norden, Agnostos Theos, p. 85. STL tM 20 GC: 


56 WHAT IS A MYSTERY-RELIGION ? 


or sure word, pointed toward the Oriental Revelation- Theory 
of religious knowledge. Nor did Plato stop here. He 
inoculated Greek thought with that transcendentalism which 
entered henceforth to contest the field with indigenous Greek 
immanence and finally to triumph in Neo-Platonism. In the 
Hellenistic era this element of Platonism proved a convenient 
bridge to the Oriental conception of deity which necessitated 
a condescension in the form of a special revelation. 

Plato having thus prepared the way, Posidonius was the 
first, so far as our evidence goes, who definitely introduced 
to the Western religious mind? the conception of ‘the 
knowledge of God’ as something transcending conceptual 
thought and eluding intellectual grasp. It is noteworthy 
that this idea of the knowledge of God, so faint in Greek 
literature, grows pari passu with the increasing religious 
syncretism of the Hellenistic-Roman era, to which no one 
contributed more than did Posidonius, who influenced 
Lucretius, Virgil, Cicero, Seneca, Philo, the Hermetic 
writers, and practically every subsequent religious 
writer. 

In Philo we come nearest to the later conception of God 
being not only unknown, but also defying comprehension 
(axatddnrros), though Philo struggles hard to hold together 
the Greek view of God as comprehensible by reason and the 
Hebraic idea of divine transcendence, the latter of which 
he carried far beyond Plato and nearer to the position of 
Plotinus. While asserting that the knowledge of God is 
‘the summit of happiness and blessedness,’ he says ‘ the 
Creator made no soul in any body capable by its own 
powers of seeing the Creator.’* His tendency is further 
illustrated in the following passages: God says to Moses,' 
‘As to the comprehension of Me, human nature is 
unequal to the task, for mot even the whole earth 
nor the world is able to contain it’; and again he 
asks, ‘Is it to be wondered at if the Being [God] 

1 Norden, p. 99. 


* Quod det. potiort insid; XXIV, Mang. I. 208, C.-W. 86. 
8 De Monarchia, I, ch. VI; Mang. II. 218. 


QUEST FOR GNOSIS OF GOD 57 


defies the comprehension of men, when the spirit that is in 
each one is unknown? ’! 

Subsequently, especially in the second and third centuries 
of our era, the intermixture of Greek thought and Oriental 
mystic speculation grew apace, the latter element becoming 
predominant, in the attempt to release the spirit from the 
realm of matter, the way to which was a Guosis, or special 
revelation. The quest for the knowledge of God which 
would ensure salvation became the occupation of an intensely 
religious age, a quest upon which the Orient sent the 
Occident.2. Every religion, in order to survive and compete 
successfully, was obliged to assume in some degree the 
character of a Gnosis, a necessity from which even Chris- 
tianity did not escape and of which we find traces in the 
Epistles of the Imprisonment and in the Fourth Gospel. 
Whence this radical change in ancient outlook? Norden? 
has answered thus: 


‘““ The Greek sought his Welianschauung by way of specula- 
tion. With his unique clearness of conceptual th nking he 
knocked at the gate of knowledge; he aimed at intellectual 
apprehension by his logical faculties, the mystic-ecstatic 
element being at least in principle excluded. The Oriental 
acquires his knowledge of God not by way of speculation, 
but his emotional life, slumbering in the deeps of his soul, 
and awakened through religious needs, brings him to a 
union with God. Such a union issues in a complete ascent 
to God, so that knowledge is acquired in a supernatural 
fashion to the exclusion of the intellect, because God of His 
grace manifests Himself to the soul that strives after Him. 

“ Hence, faith and enlightened vision supersede scientific 
knowledge and understanding, a profound inner experience 
supersedes reflection, pious surrender to the Absolute takes 
the place of that proud sense of enquiry which prescribes 
its own bounds. Only through union with God (Pozm. I. 22) 
is a knowledge of the world and man made possible ; con- 
sequently this knowledge of the world and man is rated as 
of merely secondary importance.”’ 


1 De mut. nom. II, Mang. I. 579, C.-W. 10. 
2 Cf. Norden, p. 113, 3 Ibtd. pp. 97-8. 


58 WHAT IS A MYSTERY-RELIGION ? 


IV. A Mystery-Religion was a Sacramental Drama 
which appealed primarily to the emotions and aimed at 
producing psychic and mystic effects by which the neophyte 
might experience the exaltation of a new life. In saying this 
we must once more bear in mind the numerous and marked 
differences obtaining among the Mysteries, and the very 
different presentations given of the nature of the Mystery. 
The old and purely objective view of a Mystery as an external 
representation or ritual transaction to the neglect of the 
inner experiences and ecstatic conditions, prevalent since 
the days of Lobeck, is no longer tenable. Had the Mysteries 
and their dyomena been merely such an external spectacle 
one fails to find any explanation why they quickened religious 
life for so many centuries and how they fostered mysticism. 
Moreover, a visit to the ¢elesterion of Eleusis is convincing 
evidence that a dvama, in the scenographic sense of the word, 
could not have been enacted there. Neither can we suppose 
that at the numerous small centres of the Mysteries there 
was available the apparatus for staging a passion-play of 
mediaeval character. Such dramatic performances would 
be out of the question for individual initiations, such as were 
possible in some of the Mysteries. The strongest reaction 
from the old objective idea is that of the Dutch scholar, 
De Jong, who, in his valuable De Apuleto Istacorum myste- 
riorum teste and Das antike Mysterienwesen, stresses the 
connexion between the Mysteries and Magic, collects ancient 
and modern occult phenomena parallel to those of the 
Mysteries, and eliminates the objective for the subjective. 
Macchioro, in his Zagreus and Orfismo e Paolinismo, reads 
the ancient evidence in favour of the Mysteries as real 
subjective experiences* accompanying sacramental acts, 


1 For conspectus of views cf. Macchioro, Zagreus, p. 184 f. 

2 “La novita . .. delle mie ricerche intorno ai misteri sta nell’ aver 
concepito il dyomenon come drama subbiettivo invece che come drama 
obbiettivo, nell’ aver trasportato cioé il dramma dall’ esterno all’ interno 
e averlo posto non come fatto naturale ma come un processo spirituale. 
In fondo potremmo dire che cid equivale a ridurre il dromenon da con- 
oscenza a esperienza: e come tale la mia teoria si connette alla corrente 
religiosa odierna che tende a concepire il fatto religioso come azione”’ 
(Orfismo e P. p. 115; cf. his summary, p. 190). 


A SACRAMENTAL DRAMA 59 


as religion in action. On our view—most nearly approach- 
ing that of Macchioro—the objective cannot be lightly 
eliminated. Though the subjective estate, with its mystic 
experiences, visions, and auto-suggestion, was the real 
‘mystery’ sought after and, by many, attained, meticulous 
importance was attached to the formality of the dromena, 
or cult transactions, which, for many, remained liturgical 
representations, and nothing more. The action was to the 
ancient mind, as it is to many modern minds, a sacramental 
constituent of the whole spiritual experience. The dramatic 
representations assumed varying proportions according to 
the spiritual maturity or genius of the particular Mystery. 
The sensuous appeal varied according to the cult and the 
individual worshipper. There were all degrees of excitation 
—the drunken frenzy of the Bacchanalian rites, the madden- 
ing and bloody ritual of Cybele or Mén, the imposing pomp 
of the Isiac cult, the silent contemplation of the Mithraic 
brethren. On the other hand, the syncretistic Hermetic 
religion has practically outgrown the dramatic representa- 
tions and sensuous attractions, making its appeal primarily 
to the Nous, or Spirit. But, speaking generally, the Mysteries 
made their appeal not to the intellect, but through eye, ear, 
and imagination to the emotions. What Farnell has said 
of the Eleusinian Mysteries applies in a measure to all : 


“To understand the quality and intensity of the 
impression we should borrow something from the modern 
experiences of Christian Communion Service, Mass, and 
Passion Play, and bear’ in mind also the extraordinary 
susceptibility of the Greek mind to an artistically impressive 
pageant,’”’ ? 


A Mystery-Religion was thus a divine drama * which por- 
trayed before the wondering eyes of the privileged observers 
the story of the struggles, sufferings, and victory of a patron 
deity, the travail of nature in which life ultimately triumphs 
over death, and joy is born of pain. This was impressed 


t Art. Mystery, Ency. Brit. 11th ed. XIX, p. 121 b. 
2 Cf. Athenagoras, 30 B, Clement, Pyotr, II, 12. 


60 WHAT IS A MYSTERY-RELIGION ? 


on the beholder by a solemn mimic representation. Thus, 
at the spring festival (Megalensia) of the Great Mother 
the myth of Attis was rehearsed in a passion-play. The 
sacred pine-tree under which the unfaithful youth had 
mutilated himself was cut down. The tree then, prepared 
like a corpse, was carried into the sanctuary, accompanied 
by a statue of the god and other symbols. Then followed 
the lamentation of Attis, with an appropriate period of 
abstinence. On the Day of Blood the tree was buried, while 
the mystae in frenzied dances gashed themselves with knives 
to prove their participation in the sorrows of the god that 
they might have fellowship in his joy. Next night the 
Resurrection of Attis was celebrated by the opening of the 
grave. In the darkness of the night a light was brought to 
the open grave, while the presiding priest anointed the lips 
of the initiates with holy oil, comforting them with the 
words: 1 ‘ Be of good cheer, ye mystae of the god who has 
been saved ; to you likewise there shall come salvation from 
your trouble.’ The initiates gave vent to their emotions 
in a wild carnival: they made their confession that by 
eating out of the tympanum and drinking out of the cym- 
balum they had been rendered communicants of Attis.* 
Examples of the enactment of these symbolic passion- 
plays could be multiplied, as for instance, the Finding of 
Osiris,2 emblematic of man’s immortality, or the slaughter 
of the mystic bull so familiar on the sculptures of the Mithraic 
chapels.‘ Plutarch* depicts the myth of the rending of 
Osiris by Typhon and the ensuing struggles of Isis as a 
passion-play in which Isis ‘did not forget the struggles 
and trials which she had endured, nor permit oblivion 
and silence to overtake her wanderings and many deeds 
of wisdom and courage, but by associating images and 
suggestions and representations of her erstwhile sufferings 


' Minucius Felix, De err. prof. relig. XXII. 

8 Cf. Hepding, Attis, pp. 147-67, 

3 Cf. Cumont, Relig. orient., p. 146; Min. Felix, II; Statius, Silvae, 
Wa ey a , 

4 Cumont, The Mysteries of Mithra, Eng. tr. p. 130 ff. 

8 Del, €f/OS)) XV 11361 De 


EMOTIONAL EXALTATION 61 


with the holiest mysteries she thereby consecrated a lesson 
in piety and a consolation for men and women who are 
overtaken by similar misfortunes.’ Firmicus Maternus ! 
states, in reference to the legend of Dionysus: ‘ Cretenses.. . 
festos funeris dies statuunt, et annum sacrum trieterica 
consecratione componunt, omnia per ordinem facientes quae 
puer moriens aut fecit aut passus est.’ 

The whole ritual of the Mysteries aimed especially at 
quickening the emotional life, and in this respect Cumont 
affirms that “ they refined and exalted the psychic life and 
gave to it an almost supernatural intensity such as the 
ancient world had never before known.’’? No means of 
exciting the emotions was neglected in the passion-play, 
either by way of inducing careful predispositions or of 
supplying external stimulus. Tense mental anticipation, 
heightened by a period of abstinence, hushed silences, 
imposing processions and elaborated pageantry, music loud 
and violent or soft and enthralling, delirious dances, the 
drinking of spirituous liquors,? physical macerations, 
alternations of dense darkness and dazzling light, the sight 
of gorgeous ceremonial vestments, the handling of holy 
emblems, auto-suggestion and the promptings of the 
hierophant—these and many other secrets of emotional 
exaltation were in vogue. Apuleius ‘ avers of his initiation : 
*I approached the confines of Death ; I trod the threshold 
of Proserpina ; after being carried through all the elements, 
I returned to earth. At midnight I beheld the sun shining 
with its bright splendour: I penetrated into the very 
presence of the gods below and the gods above, where I 
worshipped face to face.’ 

Thus the Mysteries, with the exception of the Hermetic 
theology and Orphism, were never conspicuously doctrinal 
or dogmatic *: they were weak intellectually and theologi- 
cally. Aristotle’s statement that it was not necessary for 

1 VI. 5. 
2 Religions orient. p. xxv; cf. p. 43 f. 
3 Cumont, T. et M.I, p. 323; Relig. orient. 2nd ed. p. 45. 


{ Metam. XI. 23. 
5 Reitzenstein, Mysterien-rel. 2nd ed. p. 14. 


62 WHAT IS A MYSTERY-RELIGION ? 


the initiated ‘ to learn anything, but to have their emotions 
stirred,’ does not prove the absence of all instruction, but 
indicates that such occupied a secondary place. Things 
were ‘said’ as well as ‘done.’ According to Apuleius cer- 
tain secrets too holy for utterance were imparted by the 
priest : his reader might rightly enquire guid dictum, quid 
factum. But the symbolic representations, the handling of 
the sacra, and the emotional exaltation were the chief matter. 
Some interpretation was necessary in order to assure the 
participant that he had found a redemptive religion. The 
TedeTHS tapddoots was accompanied by a lepds Adyos, OF 
sacred exegesis. 

The secrecy with which the Mysteries terminated behind 
the veil of the temple,t compared with the publicity with 
which they generally commenced in the streets, is explicable 
from the fact that the things ‘done’ or ‘said’ were not 
the things actually to be revealed but merely symbolic 
means of conveying the intended truth to the minds of the 
votaries. The sacramental acts and religious legends, based 
on naturalism, would have been repellent to the moral sense 
of the votaries. The true votary, however, like every true 
worshipper, believed that the letter killeth and the spirit 
quickeneth. We can well conceive how the sacramental 
representations of the Sacred Marriage and Rebirth were 
fraught with grave difficulty even to the participant 
equipped with an esoteric exegesis. The same religious 
idealism was demanded from him as that by which Christian 
mystics and the Church hymnology have transmuted the 
prothalamium or epithalamium of the Canticles into an 
expression of the passion of the soul for God. Some of the 
acts and portions of the legends were, taken literally, frankly 
indecent, and gave justification to the strictures of Clement 
of Alexandria,? Arnobius,? Minucius Felix,‘ and other 

1 Cf. Slade Butler, XIXth Cent., 1905, pp. 490-9. 

2 Protrept. II. 16, et passim. 

3 Adv. Gentes, V. 21, of the Sabazian mysteries, ‘in quibus aureus coluber 
in sinum dimittitur consecratis et eximitur rursus ab inferioribus partibus 
atque imis.’ 

4 De err. prof. rel. X, XII, XTX. 


ESCHATOLOGICAL RELIGIONS 63 


Christian apologists, against the Mysteries as provocative 
of lust. On the other hand, Iamblichus, no mean philo- 
sopher, and one who has written from personal experience 
one of the finest passages in literature on the joy brought 
to the soul by the divine presence,! defends with all his 
religious earnestness even the exhibitions of sex emblems * 
in the Mysteries as veritable means of grace to overcome 
fleshly appetite. In estimating these dramatic representa- 
tions, so strange and even offensive to us, we should as 
students of the history of religion, hear both sides. Alongside 
of Clement of Alexandria we should read what the father of 
European idealism, Plotinus, found in their symbolism. 
“ The great problem of Idealism is symbolically solved in the 
Eleusinia ”’ is the conclusion of an early nineteenth century 
writer.’ Each Mystery-Religion had an idealistic tendency.* 

V. The Mysteries were eschatological religions having to 
do with the interests and issues of life and death. Their 
chief charm was that they brought an evangel of life and 
immortality to confront the mystery of the grave. The 
religion of Greece might satisfy while life was joyous; it 
offered no rod and staff to men entering the valley of the 
Shadow. The religion of Rome, in which the domestic 
hearth and the continuity of the family bulked so large, 
could hold forth nothing better than the dreary Manes-cult. 
Philosophy brought to many great souls a blessed hope and 
in later phases employed the symbolism of the Mysteries to 
reinforce the faith in immortality. But for the multitude 
it was the Mysteries which illuminated the Hereafter.§ 
Earth’s smoothness had been turned rough ; the mind was 
directed from the state-religions, which had failed to save 
the State, to eschatological cults in which individuals found 


1 De Mysteriis, II. 6 and 9. S01 Dideul ty 12s 

8 Cited in Taylor, Eleus. and Bacchic Mysteries, p. vii. Cf. Inge, Phil. of 
Plotinus, I. p. 56: ‘‘ These strange institutions combined naturalistic 
tradition and mystic theology, the realism of a legendary divine drama and 
philosophical idealism, the religion of the senses and that of the heart.” 

“ Cf. Cornford, From Religion to Phil. p. 114; Ramsay, Cities and B. 
Te p..93: 

5 Cf. Lake, Stewardship of Faith, p. 69. 


64. WHAT IS A MYSTERY-RELIGION ? 


salvation. The Mysteries responded to the prevalent 
appetit d’un monde meilleur, to that world-renouncing and 
world-weary spirit which demands another sphere ! wherein 
the wrongs of the present are righted, to that ancient 
desire for the ‘ rebirth for eternity ’ with its escape from the 
‘cycle of generation.’ 

An eschatological religion entails an ethic by maintaining 
a moral nexus between this life and the next. Hence the 
Mysteries, by asserting that man’s hereafter is in some way 
conditioned by conduct here, definitely ranged themselves 
with that religious faith in a future life which had been 
increasing since the day when Plato made ‘‘ the noblest 
single offering that human reason has yet laid upon the 
altar of human hope.” ? In alliance with Neo-Pytha- 
goreanism and Neo-Platonism, they appealed to that spirit 
of other-worldliness which became so characteristic of 
the religious syncretism of the third and fourth centuries. 
The mystae were witnesses against religious agnosticism, 
which would view the question of immortality as a bellum 
somnium, and against the doctrine of annihilation, which 
would assert that ‘ beyond the grave there is no opportunity 
for either anxiety or joy.’* What a contrast this profession 
of faith of the mystae must have presented to the unbelieving 
world! # Carved on the tombs in the cemetery of the 
Mystery ‘ brothers ’ the passer-by would be arrested by such 
triumphant words as ‘ Reborn for eternity ’ or ‘ Be of good 
cheer,’ while on those of the uninitiated he might read such 
a frivolous confession as ‘I was not, I became: I am not 
and I care not,’ or ‘ Hold all a mockery, reader; nothing 
is our own.’5 The Orphic dead were cremated in hope of 
a blessed hereafter ensured by the tablets deposited with 
them,* just as the Apocalypse of Peter was deposited in a 
Christian grave in Egypt. 


1 What Inge calls ‘“‘ The ‘ ought-to-be ’—the not-given complement of 
our fragmentary and unsatisfying experience ”’ (Jb. I. 51). 

® Geddes, Phaedo of Plato, p. xxvii. 3 Sallust, Zn Cat. LI. 

* Cf. ‘sweet hopes,’ Aristides, Eleus. I. 421 (Dind.); C.I.G. 6562. 

5 Cf. Angus, Environment of Early Christianity, p. 103 ff. 

® For Orphic funerary rite, cf. Macchioro, Orf. e Paol., p. 274 ff. 


PERSONAL RELIGIONS 65 


VI. A Mystery-Religion was a personal religion to which 
membership was open not by the accident of birth but by a 
religious rebirth. The hereditary principle of membership 
known to the state-religions of Greece and Rome and to the 
church-state of Israel was superseded by that of personal 
volition which has been the dominating principle in reli- 
gious history since the days of Alexander the Great. The 
religion of the thiasos had replaced that of the folis.1 
Consequently the Mysteries, with their pronounced 
subjectivity and variety of impression, responded to and 
augmented the individualism inaugurated in the Mediter- 
ranean world by Alexander and consummated by the 
Roman Empire. 

That religion is primarily a personal matter is a common- 
place to us ; it was an epoch-making discovery to the leading 
peoples of the Roman Empire. So strong was the racial 
consciousness of the Jews that they for the most part 
conceived God’s dealings with them as moving within the 
Covenant. Individualism was at any time but a passing 
phase in their religious experience.? It is true that Jeremiah 
and Ezekiel rescued the individual, and that Ezekiel carried 
individualism to such an extent as to overlook the effects 
of heredity and the constitution of society by which we are 
members the one of the other. It was in the services of the 
Synagogue that the personal religion and piety of Israel 
attained fullest expression. The religions of Greece and 
Rome were corporate entities—the religious experience of 
their social and political systems. Men worshipped for the 
good of all collectively rather than for the good of their own 
souls. These religions, like every religion that allies itself 
with temporal power, collapsed with the state systems which 
they had buttressed. In the ensuing confusion and amid 
the welter of centuries of strife personal needs became more 
clamant. These needs were at least partially satisfied by 


1 Cf. Kaerst, II. 1, pp. 280-3: ‘‘ Die private Initiative tritt an die Stelle 
der von der Polis hervorgerufenen Veranstaltungen.” 

2 Cf, Charles, Eschatology, 2nd ed. pp. 59-69, 78-81, 129 ff. 

* Cf. Fairweather, Background of the Gospels, 2nd ed. pp. 30-8. 


6 


66 WHAT IS A MYSTERY-RELIGION ? 


the Mysteries,! which contemplated man irrespective of the 
polity or social conditions under which he lived. “ With 
them,” says Cumont, “religion ceases to be bound to the 
State in order to become universal ; it is no longer conceived 
as a public duty, but as a personal obligation ; it no longer 
subordinates the individual to the city-state, but professes 
above all to ensure his personal salvation in this world and 
above all in the next.’’* To Orphism must be attributed in 
no small measure this shifting of religious emphasis.*? Athens, 
too, took a momentous religious step ‘in the abolition before 
the sixth century B.c. of gentile privileges in the Eleusinian 
Mysteries in favour of free choice. Unlike the state reli- 
gions the Mysteries as personal cults produced saints and 
ascetics,> and martyrs. Livy records how ‘a multitude’ of 
the members of the Dionysiac brotherhoods lost their lives in 
an attempt by the Government to extirpate them. Many and 
severe were the persecutions to which the Isiac faith was 
subjected about the beginning of the Christian era. The 
presence of skeletons in the Mithraic chapels testifies to this 
day to the martyrs who, as devoted milites Mithrae invict1, 
suffered at Christian hands.’ In these personal cults the 
worshippers were united by the ties of fellowship with the 
deity of their choice, by the obligation of common vows, 
by the duty of personal propaganda, and by revivalistic 
enthusiasm. The pious could in ecstasy feel himself lifted 
above his ordinary limitations to behold the beatific vision, 

1 Cf. Bousset, Kyrios Christos, p. 152 ff.; Religion in Gesch. u. Geg. 
V, p. 1043 ff.; Mackintosh, Originality, p. 19. 

* Religions orient. p. xxii; cf. pp. 68-9. 

% Rohde, II, p. 121 ; Macchioro, Zagreus, p. 263 f.; Eisler, Weltenmantel 
YE cs FMAM Eo MIS eho) 

4 Farnell, Cults, III. p. 155. 

5 Cf. Reitzenstein, Hell. Mysterien-rel. 2nd ed. p. 79 ff.; Bouché- 
Leclercq, Mélanges Perrot, p. 17 ff.; Preuschen, Ménchtum u. Sarapis 
Kult, p. 5 ff.; K. Sethe, Sarapis u. d. sogen. xkadroxo d. Sarapis in Abh. 
Ges. Wiss. Gott. XIV. ’13. Cf. Porph. De Antvo Nymph. 15. 

® Cf. Dill, Rom. Society, pp. 563-6; Aust, p. 157; Lafaye, Isis in 
Daremberg-Saglio, p. 577. 

7 InCumont’s T. et M. II, p. 519, there appears a photo of the chained 


skeleton found in the Mithraeum of Sarrebourg. Cf. also his Mysteries of 
Mithra, 3rd ed. p. 215, Eng. tr. pp. 203-5. 


COSMIC RELIGION 67 


or in enthusiasm believe himself to be God-inspired or God- 
filled—phenomena in some respects akin to the experiences 
of the early Christians on the outpouring of the Spirit. 

One reason why the Mysteries were so long anathema to 
the rulers of the West was that, as personal religions, they 
concerned themselves little with public life, centring their 
attention on the individual life. They accentuated that 
indifference to citizenship in society at large which was 
charged against the Jews, and not without some justification 
against the Christians,1 and which proved one of the chief 
factors in the disintegration of ancient civilization.’ 

VII. A Mystery-Religion, as a personal religion, presents 
another side, which is the necessary complement of an 
individualistic religion ; that is, it takes on the character 
of a cosmic religion. The ancients lived in a world in which 
the primitive association of man’s life with the earth and 
plant and animal life was axiomatic, in which the stars * 
were ensouled as deities, in which the Universe itself was a 
rational living being,‘ in which man by his good deeds might 
be elevated to a demon as a stage on the path to divinization.° 
This comprehensive cosmic consciousness made what Emer- 
son calls “ the linked purpose of the whole ”’ the object both 
of speculative’ and religious thought, which derived from 

1 Cf. A. C. McGiffert, The Influence of Christianity upon the Roman Empire 
in Harv. Theo. Rev. Jan. 1909; J. Geffcken, Der Ausgang des griech.-vom. 
Heidentums in N. Jahrb. f. d. klas. Alt. XLI, pp. 93-124; and a series 
of arts. by Ferrero on La Ruine de la civilisation antique in Rev. des deux 
mondes, Sep. ’19 ff. ; 

2 This is sometimes viewed by historians as the nemesis for the ostracism 
of early Christianity by Paganism. Cf. Lavisse et Rambaud, Hist. générale 
du IV®. siecle a nos jours (Paris ’96) vol. I. pp. 31-5. ; 

8’ Hence Pythagoras, like St. Francis of Assisi, preached to animals. 
Iamblichus, V. Pyth. 13; Porphyry, V. Pyth. 24. Cf. what Sextus Emp. 
(Math. 9, 127) says of the Italian School: gacl wh pdvov quiv mpds addxAous 
kal mpds Oeods elval riva Kkowwvlay, dd\d\a Kal mpds Ta ddoya THY Egur, & yap 
Urdpxew veda Td ia wavrds TOO Kdcmov Sinkov Wuxhs Tpdrov, Td Kal évody Huds 
mpos éxeiva, . 

4 Cic. N.D. II. 15, 39; Il. 21, 56; 44, 115; Seneca, Benef. VII. 313; II. 
41, 126; Philo, De Opif. Mundi, 24, M.I. 17. 

5 Cf. Arnold, Rom. Stoicism, p. 184 f.; Murray, Four Stages, p. 119. 

6 Cf. Plutarch, De J. et Os. 27, Rom. 28; Pseudo-Apul., Asclepius, 6. 


7 Cf. the ps.-Arist. treatise De Mundo, and Cappelle thereon in N. Jahrb. 
f. a. klas. Alt. ’05, pp. 529-68. 


68 WHAT IS A MYSTERY-RELIGION ? 


this universal kinship the postulate that like is apprehended 
by like in a harmony in which Plato said that God Himself 
“ geometrizes.’ # 

This cosmic interest—the craving of man for order within 
as without—was one of the most prominent notes in the Helle- 
nistic age, not only in the Mysteries but in the philosophies, 
and in Christian theology, which was obliged to include 
cosmological speculation in its Christology. It rested upon 
the true instinct that religion must put man right with the 
totality of things by removing desolating antitheses. As 
with one acclaim there arose from the hearts of the men 
of the Graeco-Roman period the cosmic prayer: rave trate 
THY acupupaviay Tod Koopov.s In many ways utterance was 
given to presages of Whittier’s verses : 


“So sometimes comes to soul and sense 
The feeling that is evidence 
That very near about us lies 
The realm of spiritual mysteries, 
The sphere of the supernal powers 
Impinges on this world of ours.” 


The naiveté of a primitive naturalistic monism had been 
succeeded by a consciousness of a breach between Man and 
Nature, and by the conception of a Chaos beside a Cosmos. 
To the problem thereby created the Mysteries addressed 
themselves. Only the few contemplatives could remain 
permanently persuaded that the centripetal forces of the 
soul expressed in Mysticism make up the totality of spiritual 
life. 

Cosmic religious interest was stimulated by a variety of 
factors : (1) The breaking up of the ecclesiastical colleges of 
the Euphrates Valley, whose disestablished priests directed 
attention to the study of the heavens and asserted the 


1 Perhaps the best expression of this is Plotinus, Eun. I. 6,9: ot yap dpav 
mpos Td Opwmevov avyyeves Kal Suoroy monoauevoy Set EriBarrew TH Oda. ob yap ay 
mwwrote eldev dPOaruds HrLov HrLoerdns wh yeyernuévos, ovdé Td kaddv av Wa Wuxh 
BH Kan yevoudry. 

2 Cf. Sapientia, II. 17 ff. 

8 Hippolytus, Philosoph. V. 8, 75. 


INCREASE IN COSMIC INTEREST 69 


indissoluble connexion between heaven and earth in magic, 
astrology, and divination. (2) The invasion of polytheism 
by a subtle and mystical pantheism which altered the whole 
outlook of Hellenistic-Oriental theology by making cosmic 
interests and speculations henceforth organic to all theology. 
(3) The frightful social evils which may be dated from the 
Peloponnesian War and became increasingly oppressive until 
respite was granted in the Roman Peace. In these dis- 
tresses and upheavals the spirit of Orphism revived and 
with it the Orphic speculations in cosmogony and eschato- 
logy which had retreated to the background in days of 
joy.1 (4) The missionary propaganda of the Oriental 
religions which, being originally nature-cults, retained and 
enlarged their interest in cosmic speculation. (5) The 
widening of the intellectual horizon by which men were 
regarded as denizens of a cosmos rather than as citizens of 
a State. (6) The immense progress made in the scientific 
study * of astronomy, mathematics, medicine, and other 
sciences, which disclosed harmonies and universal laws by 
which the human mind appeared as participant in, and in 
alignment with, the all-ordering Nous, or World-Soul. 

The manifold religious phases of cosmic thought * in the 
Hellenistic-Roman period are reflected in its cosmogonies, 
theogonies, theosophy, astralism, magic, pantheistic element- 
mysticism, solar monotheism, doctrine of reincarnation, and 
in all systems of Gnosticism. Such cosmic speculation did 
good service in vindicating a unitary conception of the 
universe. In the Timaeus Plato discovered evidence of an 
ordering Mind in all things, and Aristotle emphasized the 
fact that all formed a rational whole interpenetrated by 
reason and unveiling its secrets to reason. Posidonius, by 
uniting Platonic and Oriental mysticism and by infusing into 
scientific studies religious fervour, did more than anyone 


1 Cf. Dieterich, Abraxas, p. I. 

2 Cf. Th. H. Martin, Astronomia in Daremberg-Saglio, Dict. p. 501 ff. ; 
Legge, I, pp. 116-19. 

3 Cf. M. Dibelius, Die Christianisierung einer hellenist. Formelin Jahrb. 
f. das kl, Alt. XXXV, pp. 224-35. 


70 WHAT IS A MYSTERY-RELIGION ? 


else to make cosmology a religion.' In his teaching yvaars 
Oeohb ~and verum cognoscere causas were practically 
synonymous. Thecosmos, so far from being a chaos, is on 
deeper knowledge perceived to be a soul-permeated magni- 
tude. It was an image of God as was also man.?_ God is in 
all and through all, and by a knowledge of the All one 
attains to the knowledge of God, whose nature is revealed 
in the mysteries of creation, generation, decay, rebirth, 
universal law. Stoic monism was emphatic on the unity of 
things. God was conceived as the World, or again as the 
spiritual element or vital fire of the World. Thus, Marcus 
Aurelius frequently returns to the thought of the unity of 
the world, his most explicit statement being : 


‘ All things are intertwined, the one with the other, and 
sacred is the bond: there is practically nothing alien the 
one to the other, for all things have been marshalled in order 
and constitute the one Cosmos. For there is both one 
Cosmos of all things, and one God through all, and one 
Substance, and one Law, and one common Reason of 
intelligent beings, and one Truth.’ * 


Such a unitary conception of the world was a fixed article 
of faith in the Mysteries. They professed to bring the 
initiand into union with the God of the All and to impart 
to him a knowledge of the secrets of Nature in all its phases 
from before birth to the other side of the grave. ‘ Every 
initiation aims at uniting us with the World and with the 
Deity,’ says Sallustius.‘ These religions not only prompted 
cosmic speculation, but adjusted themselves to prevalent 
cosmic views, which for a time increased their popularity 
but ultimately militated against them. By their sacraments 
they undertook to deliver man from the Necessity inherent 


1 Cf. W. Kroll, Die gesch. Bedeutung des Posidonios in N. Jahrb. f. d. kl. 
Alt. XXIX, pp. 145-57. 

2 Asclepius, 10. 

3 Meditations, VII. 9; cf. IV. 40, 45, VI. 38. 

4 De diis et mundo, 4 (Mullach, F.P.G. I, p. 33), with which Mullach 
compares Jamb. De Myst. V. 23. 


MAN A MICROCOSM 7X 


in a fixed world-order. The Mysteries made terms with 
polytheism and pantheism by making their respective 
deities all-comprehensive, and with monotheism by equating 
the gods of competing religions with their cult-deity, and in 
later stages of more advanced monotheism ! by identifying in 
some measure their deity with the Sun-god,’ until the solar 
cult became the concentration of vital paganism * 

The cult-titles used in prayers of invocation will reveal 
the cosmic character of the Mystery-gods. The god of the 
Mystery is not like the Jahweh of the Hebrews, whose is the 
earth and the fulness thereof. The Mystery-god had other 
functions besides those of creation and providence. He 
was both the One and the All. An Orphic ‘ verse declares 
‘Zeus was first, Zeus last, and Zeus head and middle.’ 
In answer to Lucius’ invocation Isis manifests herself as 
‘rerum naturae parens, elementorum omnium domina, 
saeculorum progenies initialis, summa numinum, regina 
manium, prima caelitum, deorum dearumque facies uni- 
formis, quae caeli luminosa culmina, maris salubria flamina, 
inferum deplorata silentia nutibus meis dispenso.’* The 
same goddess is addressed as Una quae est omnia,’ and on 
the inscription in the shrine of Neit in Sais recorded in 
Plutarch ’ Isis appears as ‘ I am all, that which has been, is, 
and shall be.’ Attis appears as the ‘ Most High and bond 
of the Universe.’* Serapis is ‘as the Coryphaeus of the 
universe, holding the beginnings and the ends.’ ® 

The doctrine of man as a microcosm of the macrocosm— 
hominem quasi minorem quemdam mundum®—is one to which 
frequent expression is given in the mystic-astrological 

1 Cf. ‘ One is Zeus, one Hades, one Helios, one Dionysos, one God in all * 
(Abel, fr. 7). 


2 Cf. Proclus’ Hymn to the Sun. 

% Cf. Boissier, La Fin, I. pp. 129-36; Allard, Julien, II. pp. 232-45. 

4 Abel, fr. 46, 123. 

5 Apuleius, Metam. XI. 5; cf. also 7b. 2 and 25. 

§ Dessau, 4362; cf. Orelli-Henzen, 1871. 

7 Del. et 0.9. 

8 C.I.L. VI. 509; Hepding, Aitis, p. 83: “Arret bWiorw kal ouvéxovre 7d war, 
9 Aristides, Or. sacrae, VIII. 53; Dind. I. p. 91. 

10 Firm. Maternus, Math. III. init, 


72 WHAT IS A MYSTERY-RELIGION ? 


theology. It is a corollary of the kindred doctrine of 
Element-mysticism, viz. that man is constituted of the 
same elements as the heavenly bodies, which are viewed as 
animate beings.t No one has given clearer expression to 
such microcosm-theology than Manilius?*: 


‘An dubium est, habitare deum sub pectore nostro 

In caelum redire animas caeloque venire ? 

Utque sit ex omni constructus corpore mundus 

Aetheris atque ignis summi terraeque marisque, 

Spiritus et motu rapido, quae visa, gubernat, 

Sic esse in nobis terrenae corpora sortis, 

Sanguineasque animas, animum, qui cuncta gubernat. 
Dispensatque hominem ? Quid mirum noscere mundum 
Si possunt homines, quibus est et mundus in ipsis, 
Exemplumque dei quisque est in imagine parva ?’ 


A very practical application was made of the cosmic view of 
the microcosm and the macrocosm both by philosophy and 
mystic theology, namely, that the contemplation of the 
cosmos, particularly the resplendent starry heavens, proved 
to the devout soul an efficient means of grace. Such 
sentiments are frequently met in Posidonius, Vettius 
Valens, Philo, Cicero, Seneca, Manilius, and Plotinus. Thus 
Philo, in answer to the question why man was created last, 
replies that God provided previously all things necessary 
for him not merely to live but to live nobly: for the latter 
purpose the contemplation of the heavens induces in the 
mind a love of and desire for knowledge, which gives rise to 
philosophy, by which ‘man, though mortal, is rendered 
immortal.’ ‘ Similarly, Plotinus argues that the reverent 
contemplation of the world brings the soul into contact with 
the God of the cosmos.’ Manilius discovers man’s distin- 
guishing dignity in the fact that he— 
‘ Stetit unus in arcem 


Erectus capitis victorque ad sidera mittit 
Sidereos oculos propiusque adspectat Olympum 


1 Cf. Dieterich, Mithraslit. 2nd ed. p. 55 ff.; J. Kroll, Die Lehren des 
Hermes Trismegistos, p. 233 f. ; Mead, Quests, p. 158. 

Cry Cumont a pce 7 * De mundi opif. XXV (Mang. I. 18). 

3 Astronomica, IV. 886 fi. 5 Ennead. V. 8, 9. 


COSMIC MYSTERY-DEITIES 73 


Inquiritque Iovem ; nec sola fronte deorum 
Contentus manet et caelum scrutatur in alvo 
Cognatumque sequens corpus se quaerit in astris.’! 


The purifying effect of such an exercise is beautifully 
expressed by Vettius Valens: ‘I desired to obtain a divine 
and adoring contemplation of the heavens and to purify my 
ways from wickedness and all defilement.’ ? 

The Mystery-Religions, which were ever sensitive to the 
Zeitgeist, offered to their votaries abundant satisfaction in 
an extensive cosmology. Above all, they afforded means 
whereby the harmful influences of the heavenly powers 
might be averted, and their beneficent energy turned to 
advantage. In that troubled age of cosmological perils it 
was no mean merit of the Mysteries that they made men 
comfortable in the universe. Discussing what were the 
new and worthy elements contributed by the Oriental 
Religions to the Hellenistic age, Dibelius asserts that, in 
addition to claiming to establish a close relation between the 
mystes and his God, founded upon the personal choice and 
devotion of the mystes, ‘‘ the Oriental Religions, ina much 
more marked degree than those of the West, take into 
account cosmic interests . . . so that in these cults religious 
development keeps pace with the knowledge of the uni- 
verse.”’* In other words, their purpose was “to make 
men at home in the universe,” the phrase in which 
Bevan ‘ so exquisitely sums up the work of Posidonius. 

Seeing that ‘“‘a man’s religion is the expression of his 
ultimate attitude to the universe, the summed-up mean- 
ing and purport of his whole consciousness of things,” * 
it is not strange that Christian theology shared with the 
Mysteries an interest in cosmological speculations. The 
apocalyptic hope, so integral to primitive Christianity, 
embraced the ultimate relations of God to the present world 
order as much as to the individual believer. As soon 

1 Astronomica, IV. 905-10. 

* Ed. Kroll, p. 242; Kennedy, St. Paul and the Mystery-Religions, p. 7. 
‘ The shining stars purge the soul’ (M. Aurelius, VII. 47). Cf. Lucretius’ 


noble passage, V. 1204-40. 4 Stoics and Sceptics, p. 85. 
3 Op. cit. p. 227. 5 E. Caird, Evol. of Religion, I, p. 30. 


74 WHAT IS A MYSTERY-RELIGION ? 


as Christianity was carried beyond the pale of Judaism 
the growth of its theology was inevitably marked by an 
increasing cosmological interest, as we discover in the 
Christology of Paul.t. The work of Christ, according to 
Paul, extends to the vanquishing of demons and the subju- 
gation of all hostile celestial hierarchies, and aims ultimately 
at nothing less than ‘the complete reconciliation of the 
universe to Him [i.e. God]’ (Col. I. 20). The writer of the 
Fourth Gospel, though he has eliminated demonology, con- 
ceives Christ’s work in its effects upon the hostile ‘ world ’ 
and particularly upon a personal spirit of evil, ‘ the ruler of 
this world.’ The retreat of the Messianic categories in favour 
of the Logos Christology corresponded to the universal 
necessity for a religion with a cosmic outlook.’ 

Thus, to the merit of the Mystery-Religions be it said 
that they anticipated that modern view which holds that 
theology must have a cosmic scope, i.e. must profess to 
present an adequate conception of God in relation to the 
universe and of man in relation to his complete environment. 
Ritschl may be claimed as the father of this modern view- 
point in his notable supplementing of Schleiermacher’s great 
truth of an inner world by that of an equally important outer 
world with which man has relations. ‘ No religion,’ he 
asserts rightly ‘— 


“can be properly understood unless it be interpreted on 
some other principles than the most usual one, that religion 
consists in a relation between man and God. Three points 


1 Cf. J. Weiss, Urchristentum, II. pp. 464-70. 

2 Cf. Morgan, Religion and Theology of Paul, p. 68 ff. 

3 “* We need to remember that no salvation strictly confined to man’s 
interior life could have won the adhesion of that old world. . . . What 
vexed men was not merely guilt and moral slackness ; they also longed, 
perhaps still more passionately, to be redeemed from fate, from this 
unintelligible world, from devils and death. Possibly the salvation they 
prayed for was nearly as much physical or political as spiritual. But it 
is a true instinct which contends that redemption covers life in the world 
as really as life within’ (Mackintosh, Originality of the Christian Message, 
pp. 25-6). 

4 Justif. and Rec. Eng. tr. pp. 26-30. 


THREEFOLD ASPECT OF RELIGION 75 


are necessary to determine the circle by which a religion is 
completely represented—God, man and the world.” 


Modern Christian idealism has solved for us the cosmic 
problem on which the Mysteries and the ancient mystic 
philosophies laboured with but partial success, 


CHAPTER III 
THE THREE STAGES OF A MYSTERY-RELIGION 


Znrnocare xetpaywyov rov odnyjoovra buds éml ras THs yeuwoews Ovpas S1rov éorly 
7d Aaumpdy Pas, 7d KaOapdv oxdbros, Sov ovde els peO’er GANA TavTes vijpovow 
apopavres Ty Kapdla els Tov dpadjva OédovTa. 

Corpus Hermeticum, Poimandres 

VII. 2 (Parthey). 
THE Mystery-Religions present immense varieties in detail 
and emphasis.1 In order, however, to exhibit a pragmatic 
view of a Mystery in operation and set in relief its differential 
features we may, in a general way, analyse such a religion 
into three parts or stages having to do respectively with 
candidacy for membership, reception into the religious 
brotherhood, and the privileges and blessings resultant 
therefrom. These divisions we shall consider under- (1) 
Preparation and Probation, Katharsis; (2) Initiation and 
Communion, Muesis; (3) Blessedness and Salvation, 
Epopteta. 

Somewhat similarly Proclus? gives the three divisions 
of a Mystery as Ted¢77), wUnots and ézromreva. Olympiodorus,' 
on the other hand, gives five stages, thus: ‘In the 
Mysteries the public purifications precede ; then the more 
ineffable ; after these the introductory rites (cverdceis),' 
followed by initiation (uujces); finally, the culminating 
act of initiation (éromreta).’ In Theo Smyrnaeus* we 
find also five stages, but dissimilar from those of Olym- 
piodorus: ‘There are five stages in Initiation (uvnous). 
First of all Purification (for participation in the Mysteries 

1 Anrich, Das antike Mysterienwesen, p. 24. 

2 TIponyetrae yap 7 méev TedeTH THs wvjcews, ab'rn d¢ rhs éromrelas, 

8 Cited Lobeck, p. 41. Anrich, p. 25. 

4 Cf. K. Preisendenz, in Wiener Studien (KI. phil.) ’18, pp. 2-5. “‘ The 
rites and sacrifices which preceded and prepared the way for the actual 


celebration ’’ (Gardner, New Chapters, p. 386). 
5 P: 14, ed. Hiller; p. 15, ed. Herscher. 


76 


PREPARATION AND PROBATION 77 


is not possible for all who wish it, some being excluded 
beforehand by proclamation, such as those whose hands 
are impure and whose speech is unintelligible, while it is 
required of those not so excluded that they previously under- 
go purification) ; after the purification the second step is the 
communication of the rite (redeTHs mapddocrs) ; the third 
is what is termed éomteta [the contemplation of the 
symbols and ecstatic vision]. The fourth act, closing the 
Epopteta, is the binding and decking with garlands, qualify- 
ing the initiate to communicate to others the rites delivered 
to him either as a torch-bearer, hierophant, or in any other 
sacred capacity; the fifth, arising from the preceding, is 
Blessedness according to the grace and fellowship with the 
Deity.’ 

These differences indicate that the terminology was not 
hard and fast, and that the boundary lines of the above 
threefold division! were not rigid. We should remember 
also that a considerable length of time separates the above 
writers ; that each may have had a particular Mystery in 
mind; and that developments may have introduced 
differences. 


I. PREPARATION AND PROBATION 


1. Vows of Secrecy and deterrent Formulae. The 
Mysteries were personal religions whose adherents were 
volunteers admitted on evidence of their sincerity and fitness 
for membership. The obligation resting upon worshippers 
was personal, and not legal. If one desired to enter the 
fellowship of a religious brotherhood and share its privileges 
he was called upon to undergo examination, and disciplinary 
preparation. As against the national cults, the individual 

1“ Plerosque duas facere mysteriorum partes, winow et éromreiar, 
nonnullos tres, rederiv, pinow, éronrelay’’ (Lobeck, p. 41). ‘“‘ The suc- 
cessive stages or acts of initiation are variously described and enumerated, 
but there were at least four: «d@apois, the preparatory purification ; 
gicracts, the initiatory rites and sacrifices; re\ery, or puinows, the prior 
initiation ; émomreia, the higher or greater initiation which admitted 


to the rapddocis ray iepSv, or holiest act of the ritual '’ (Hatch, Influence 
of Greek Ideas, p. 284, 0. 3). 


78 THREE STAGES OF A MYSTERY-RELIGION 


and religious motive predominated arising out of a vague 
sense of sin, defilement, and weakness, which caused dis- 
abilities in approach to the Divine. Initiands must there- 
fore submit to a cathartic process whereby the defilements of 
the flesh and ritual uncleanness were removed, and an 
expiation for sin duly made. The cathartic, if too often 
of a ceremonial and external character, was, as in the religion 
of Israel, a step toward a spiritual outlook. In the imper- 
fect ritual the religious-minded would find sacramental 
means of grace, while the superstitious would think only 
of magical efficacy. Crude forms froma naturalistic past did 
survive to mar spiritual symbolism, but even these yielded, 
however obstinately, to the developing moral sense and 
innate spiritual idealism of mankind. The preparatory 
purification was of a liberal character, adapted to candidates 
of every level of spirituality. 

Thus, the Mysteries antiquated the state-church theory 
of the native equality of all in the privileges of a religion by 
the introduction of a religious distinction between the 
‘pure ’ and the ‘impure,’ with corresponding rewards and 
disadvantages. By the creation of such a distinction “ the 
race of mankind was lifted to a higher plane when it came to 
be taught that only the pure in heart can see God.” 3 

An awful obligation to perpetual secrecy as to what was 
said and transacted behind closed doors in the initiation 
proper was imposed—an obligation so scrupulously observed 
through the centuries that not one account of the secrets of 
the holy of holies of the Mysteries has been published to 
gratify the curiosity of historians. Apuleius * would disclose 
what was ‘ said ’ and ‘ done ’ at the Isiac initiation if it were 
lawful for the reader to hear and for himself to disclose it, 
but such a disclosure would inflict upon the reader and 
himself parem noxam. It was acrime of the most heinous 
character ‘ to divulge the Mystery-secrets. Alcibiades was 


1 Hatch, p. 285. 

* On the principle stated by Strabo (X. 3, 9, p. 467): 9 xpUyus H mvorixh 
Tay lepGy ceuvorae? Td Oelov pimounern Thy piow atrod expetyovtay Huay Thy 
alcOnow. 

3 Metam. XI. 23. 4 Cf. Lobeck, p. 48 ff. 


VOWS OF SECRECY 79 


saved from the consequences of his profanation of the 
Eleusinian Mysteries only by his popularity with the marines 
of the fleet.2 

This vow of secrecy did not extend, of course, to all the 
elements of a Mystery.? ‘ It is unlawful to communicate the 
details to the uninitiated.’* Apuleius gratifies the reader 
* quod solum potest sine piaculo ad profanorum intellegentias 
enuntiari.’‘ Pausanias * narrates of the Mysteries of the 
Kabiri: ‘ Demeter deposited something in their hands, but 
what that object was, together with the subsequent pro- 
cedure, my conscience forbids me to disclose.’ The secrecy 
kept inviolate the details of the ceremonial transactions of 
the revelation in the shrine, the exact enactment of the 
cult drama, and perhaps the esoteric interpretation of its 
legend,’ the inner meaning of the watchword (symbolum) of 
the brotherhood, the solemn formulae of the enlightenment, 
taboos, and we know not how much more. 

The vow of secrecy having been administered, there fell 
upon the ears of the excited neophyte the proclamation of 
some awful deterrent formulae, which were accompanied, 
in some cases at least, by terrifying sights, as we infer 
from Nero’s alarm at the preliminaries of initiation at 
Eleusis.’ Olympiodorus informs us that not all who desired 
initiation were granted it. The candidate had to face a 
religious ceremony * of an admonitory character correspond- 
ing to the now almost extinct “fencing of the tables” 
at a Presbyterian Communion Service. Celsus quotes 
two or three such proclamations: ‘ whosoever has clean 
hands and an intelligible tongue’ ; ‘ whosoever is holy from 


1 Plutarch, Alcib. XIX-XXII, which he expiated, Xen. Hell. IV. 20, 21. 

? Cf. Anrich, p. 31 f. st 25 

3 Diodorus, III. 61. See 2s. 

6 Cf. Seneca, Ep. XCV. 64: ‘ Sicut sanctiora sacrorum tantum initiati 
sciunt, ita in philosophia arcana illa admissis receptisque in sacra ostend- 
untur, at praecepta et alia eiusmodi profanis quoque nota sunt,’ and 
Plutarch, Quomodo qui suos sent, 82E. Proclus constantly refers to the 
Orphic interpretation of the Dionysiac myth, which in this case does not 
seem to have been subject to secrecy. 

7 Suet. Nero, 34; cf. Aristoph. Frogs, 354 f. 

8 Cf. Farnell, Cults, III. 355. 


~ 


80 THREE STAGES OF A MYSTERY-RELIGION 


every defilement and whose soul is conscious of no evil’; 
“whosoever has lived a righteous life.’ Orphic formulae 
barred the doors to the profane.* Homicides were 
particularly precluded. A more exacting proclamation 
required ‘that no one should approach unless he was 
conscious of his innocence.’* Even a saintly man like 
Apollonius of Tyana was excluded by the hierophant from 
initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries because reputed 
to be a magician.‘ In the days of Libanius 5 initiation was 
for ‘the pure of soul.’ Lucian’s parody of the Mysteries 
represents his false prophet as beginning with the utterance : 
‘If any Atheist, or Christian, or Epicurean has come to 
spy upon our festival, let him begone,’* followed later by 
‘Christians, avaunt.’ ‘ Epicureans, avaunt.’ 

2. Confession. The entrance to the Mysteries being 
guarded so scrupulously, it may be inferred that some sort 
of confession of sin was required of the neophyte. It will 
not surprise us, whose sense of sin has been quickened by 
Hebrew prophetism and the spiritual ideals of Jesus, that 
the consciousness of sin played a small part in ancient 
paganism. But even in the scanty remnants of the Mysteries 
we have ample evidence that at least several of these—the 
Samothracian, Lydian, Phrygian, Syrian, and Egyptian— 
anticipated Catholicism in the establishment of a Confes- 
sional ’—but less rigid—with the elements of a penitential 
system and absolution for uneasy devotees. The priests 
acted as representatives of the Mystery-god, exacting 
auricular confession, which the sensitive detsidaemon 
sometimes supplemented by public* confession or by a 
written record even on a public stone. 

The Samothracian Mysteries possessed such a system of 


1 Origen, con. Cels. III. 59. 

® Kern, Orph. frag. pp. 257, 261. 

3 Lamprid. Sever. XVIII. 

“ Philos. Vita A poll. IV. 18. 

5 Or. Cor. IV. 356. 

& Alex, 38. 

7 Cf. Steinleitner, Die Beicht im Zusam. mit der sakralen Rechtspflege 
in der Antike, pp. 110-23. 

8 Cf. Plutarch, Deisidaemon, VII. 168 D. 


CONFESSION—BAPTISM 81 


confessional. Plutarch * tells that when a certain Lysander 
was asked by the mystagogue to confess the most heinous 
sin lying on his conscience, he asked, ‘ Whether am I to doso 
at your bidding or at divine command?’ ‘ By the Gods.’ 
‘ Well, then, if you leave me alone I will confess to them, if 
they want to know.’ An Antalkidas, asked to make a similar 
confession at initiation into the Samothracian Mysteries, 
replied, ‘If I have done such a sin the gods themselves will 
know of it.’ 

Juvenal records an interesting case‘ of confessional in 
the cult of Isis at Rome. The Roman lady devotee of the 
Egyptian religion, having failed to observe the prescribed 
abstinence, consults the priest with a view to conciliate 
Osiris. The priest lays her request before the deity and 
prescribes the offering of a goose and a cake as means of 
absolution. Such cases were by no means isolated.° 

3. Baptisms, or lustral purifications according to care- 
fully prescribed forms, were required. Says Tertullian °: 
‘In certain Mysteries, e.g. of Isisand Mithra, it is by baptism 
(per lavacrum) that members are initiated ...in the 
Apollinarian and Eleusinian rites they are baptized, and 
they imagine that the result of this baptism is regeneration 
and the remission of the penalties of their sins.’ Similarly 
Clement of Alexandria’: ‘It is not without reason that in 
the Mysteries current among the Greeks lustrations hold 
the premier place.’ At Eleusis the mystae cleansed them- 
selves in the sea. Apuleius, after prayer for pardon, 
underwent a bath of purification, and, after the vision of the 
deity, a baptism of sprinkling.’ After ten days’ castimonia 
the Dionysiac candidate was thoroughly cleansed before 

1 Cf. Farnell, art. Mysteries, Ency. Brit. 11th ed. XIX, p. 119, who adds 
somewhat inaccurately, ‘in this respect unique in the world of classical 
religion’’; Ramsay, Cities and B. I, pp. 134, 152. 

2 Moralia, 229 D. 

3 Apophth. 217 D. 

4 Sat. V1. i532 ff. 

5 Cf. Porph. De Abst. 1V. 15; Apuleius, Met. VIII. 28. 

6 De Bapt. 5: cf. De Praes. Haer. 40. 


PSMOMAN Dns Cl 4Ds. A: 
8 Metam, XI. 20, 23. 


7 


82 THREE STAGES OF A MYSTERY-RELIGION 


initiation.! Ritual ablutions were originally assigned 
apotropaic efficacy; but, as the centre of gravity shifted 
from magic to religion, the symbolic and sacramental aspect 
of ablutions became more obvious than the apotropaic ; 
but this did not arrest development in theories of baptism. 
The union of ‘ water ’ and ‘ spirit ’ was a conception current 
in ancient religion which did not dissever the sign and the 
inner experience. The evidence for such baptisms and the 
importance attached thereto by antiquity,’ especially in 
religions of the Mystery type, has been greatly increased by 
recent discoveries. In the Hall of Initiation of the temple 
of Mén at Pisidian Antioch there was found an oblong 
depression, of which the most obvious explanation is that it 
was lacus* for baptism, not by bathing or immersion, as 
at Eleusis, but slighter. In the underground pagan shrine, 
discovered a few months ago on the Via Salaria,* the most 
striking feature is a tank sunk deep in the floor which may 
well have served as a baptistery * in some Mystery-religion. 
Baptism was also viewed as a means or sacrament of regenera- 
tion,’ as clearly expressed by Tertullian above. Firmicus 
Maternus knew this conception in the Mysteries, but ‘ there 
is another water, whereby men are renewed and reborn.’’ 
Conspicuous among such baptisms was the Taurobolium, 
which was to the renatus his ‘ spiritual birthday.’ In Titus 
III. 5 baptism is already the ‘ bath of regeneration ’ accom- 
panying renewal by the Spirit. In Hermas (Sim. IX. 16, 4) 
“the seal of the Son of God’ is water, ‘into which they 
descend dead and come up alive.’ In Gnosticism baptism 


1‘ Pure lautum’ (Livy, XXXIX, 9). 

* Cf. Hubaux, Le plongeon rituel, Musée Belge, XXVII, pp. 1-81. 

8 Ramsay, Athenaeum, Jan. 13, p. 106 f. 

* Described in Not. degli Scavi, ’23, p. 380 ff. by Sig. R. Paribeni, to 
whose kindness the writer owes the opportunity of inspecting the shrine. 

5 Not a Christian baptistery, as maintained by Wilpert; v. Pari- 
beni, 7b. p. 396. 

§ For an allied conception of baptism as the means of attaining divine 
sonship v. Usener, Weihnachtsfest, p. 160 ff. 

’ De Err, Prof, Rel. 2. 

8 Cf. Acts XXII.16; Eph. V. 26; Heb. X. 22. 


SACRIFICES 83 


was more important than even in orthodox Christianity. 
For the highest Mysteries a threefold baptism was required, 
of Water, Fire, and Spirit.’ 

4. Sacrifices were not overlooked in the Mysteries. In 
spite of the philosophic protest against bloody sacrifices, 
the prevailing view in the theology of antiquity was that 
‘without shedding of blood there is no remission of sin,’ 
so that the ancients were familiar with what has been 
termed ‘ blood-theology.’’ According to Jerome, to rever- 
ence the gods with offerings was one of the three precepts 
carved in the shrine of Eleusis.2 Olympiodorus ‘ mentions 
ovotacas between purification and initiation: these 
introductory rites are naturally sacrifices. The Eleusinian 
ritual required the sacrifice of a young pig after the bathing 
in the sea.6 The inscription of Andania* in Messenia, 
QI B.C., is the most explicit statement about mystery-sacri- 
fices. The ceremony begins with the sacrifice of two white 
lambs, followed at the purification by that of a healthy ram ; 
then in the shrine the priest offers three young pigs, and 
finally on behalf of the society one hundred lambs. In 
addition to the common sacrifice of the mystery-community 
each candidate at initiation would be obliged to offer an 
individual sacrifice. The number and character of the 
sacrifices doubtless varied with each Mystery. The 
regulations ’ of the mystery society of the Iobacchi of Athens 
include sacrifices. The instructive inscription of Lycosura ° 
specifies for the mysteries of the Mistress white female 
victims. In the apse of the subterranean basilica outside 
the Porta Maggiore are two sacrificial pits close to which 
have been found sacrificial remains which have been identified 
as skeletons of a dog and a pig—animals sacred to the cult 


1 Bousset, Hauptprobleme, p. 278 ff. 3 Adv. Iov. II. 14. 

2 Schmidt, Kop.-Gnost. Sch. I, p. 303. 4 Lobeck, p. 41. 

5 Cf. Aristoph. Frogs, 338; Achar. 764; Peace, 374. 

6 Cf. Sauppe, Die Mysterieninschrift von Andania; Prott-Ziehen, I, 
p-. 166 ff.; Michel, Recueil, no. 694; Cauer, 47.| 

7 Greek text in Maas, Orpheus, pp. 18-32. 

8 Ditt. Syil. 2nd ed. 939; Prott-Ziehen, II. 63. Cf. Pausanias, VIII. 
37, 3, and Frazer’s notes. 


84 THREE STAGES OF A MYSTERY-RELIGION 


of the Chthonians. By the impluvium of the atrium the 
bones of a second pig were found. Ina chest in a chamber 
giving entrance to the hall of initiation in the basilica of the 
Fondo Gargiulo (Villa Item) were discovered bones of birds, 
probably remnants of the mystery-sacrifices. Similar dis- 
coveries in some Mithraea point to the usage of bird 
sacrifices,? 

5. Ascetic preparations of all kinds and degrees of rigour 
were practised—prolonged fasts, absolute continence, severe 
bodily mutilations and painful flagellations,* uncomfortable 
pilgrimages to holy places, public confession, contributions 
to the church funds—in fact, nearly every form of self- 
mortification and renunciation practised by the saints and 
mystics of all ages. Some of these were of such severity 
as to be expected only from the priests or saints of a Mystery : 
they were often signs of growth in grace rather than mere 
acts of preparation, but they never lost in the estimation of 
antiquity their purificatory virtue. That adherents of these 
religions were induced to undergo tedious and painful rites 
and renew them after initiation may seem strange in our age 
of comfortable religion. The motives prompting may have 
been as disparate as human motives have ever been: 
Spiritual or worldly, or both—the sense of sin, the desire to 
escape the clogging weight of the body, or to enter into the 
felicities of the religious exaltation enjoyed by others (as 
Paul discovered in his Corinthian communities), to attain a 
pre-eminence which would entail both honour and profit, 
to facilitate the ascent of the soul. 

Rigorous ablutions were practised which must have taxed 
the robustest health, an example of which is given by Juvenal 
of a devotee of Isis: ‘ She will break the ice and descend into 
the river in winter; thrice a morning she will bathe in the 
Tiber and lave her tumid head in its very depths. Then, 
with bleeding knees, she will creep, naked and shivering, over 
the whole length of the Campus Martius.’ 


1 Cumont, T. et M.I. p. 322. 
2 Graillot, Le Culte de Cybéle, p. 301 ff.; Macchioro, Zagreus, p. 121 ff. 
3 Sat. VI 521 ff.; cf. Seneca, De Vita Beata, XXVI. 8. 


ASCETIC REQUIREMENTS 85 


Abstinence from food was a feature common to the 
entrants into all the Mysteries. Fasting may not be due in 
its origin to ascetic reasons arising from dualism, but was 
partly a self-discipline and partly a reversion to primitive 
customs,! but the purpose of it as a constituent rite in the 
Mysteries was partly to avoid conveyance of evil and 
impurities into the body, partly as a due preparation for the 
reception of the holy food of the sacramental meal,’ and 
partly through the weakening of the body to give the spirit 
the upper hand and induce the pathological conditions for the 
ecstatic exaltation. Sometimes the injunction to abstinence 
extended to all foods, but mostly only to specific, especially 
luxurious and flesh foods and wine. There was a prescribed 
period of fasting varying according to the different Mysteries, 
but eager initiands frequently, in the ardour of their faith, 
exceeded the prescription as a supererogatory merit ; such 
was the case of Lucius—‘ lege perpetua praescriptis illis decem 
diebus spontali sobrietate multiplicatis.’ * 

The Mysteries, in demanding abstinence from candidates, 
were introducing and promoting the Oriental ascetic ideal 
into the religious practices of the West, which was alien 
to the brightness of Greek worship and the practical form 
of Roman piety. Of course, Greece had her Eleusinian 
Mysteries, but modified by Oriental influences, and Rome 
had her vestals; but neither Greeks nor Romans looked 
upon the reduction of the body and the renunciation of the 
external things of life as part of religion until they came 
under the influence of the Oriental asceticism, especially in 
the Mysteries. Fasts, either partial or absolute, were so 
characteristic of alien cults that Seneca gave up vegetarian- 
ism to avoid suspicion of being a member of a foreign religion. 
In the Eleusinian legend Demeter fasted nine days, thus 
setting an example to initiates. ‘I have fasted’ was part 
of the symbolum of such initiates.‘ On the third day of the 


1 Cf. Hall in Hastings’ E.R.E. III, p. 63 f. 

2 Cf. W. R. Smith, Religion of the Semites, new ed. pp. 434-5 
3 Metam. XI. 30. 

* Clem. Alex. Protrep. 2. 


86 THREE STAGES OF A MYSTERY-RELIGION 


Thesmophoria the women fasted sitting on the ground. 
The Day of Blood, preceding the Hilaria, was observed as 
a fast-day in the festival of the Great Mother.’ Apuleius 
has recorded the thrice-repeated ten-day fasts of Lucius.* 
Long abstinences were also practised by the Mithraic 
celebrants.‘ 

Absolute continence was requisite during the holy season, 
especially on fast days. In the festival of the Thesmo- 
phoria the women took an oath that they were free from con- 
tact with men.> The Eleusinian initiands were forbidden 
sexual intercourse during the holy season.’ The Orphic 
Hippolytus protests his chastity.’ In this respect the 
Mysteries bear the birth-mark of their Eastern provenance 
or modification through Eastern influences. Such cult 
encratism contrasts strangely with some survivals of 
phallism and with the occasional eroto-religious excesses 
which too often were the concomitants of mysticism. 

6. Another feature of preparation for the full privileges 
of the Mysteries were the pilgrimages of a penitential nature, 
thus satirized by Juvenal: ‘If the white-robed Io [Isis] - 
commands, the devotee will go to the confines of Egypt and 
will carry back the desired waters from cold Meroe, that she 
may sprinkle them in Isis’ shrine.’* Apuleius has left a 
vivid account of his wanderings from shrine to shrine by 
which his purse was depleted. These pilgrimages were 
repeated after initiation as tokens of devotion when the 
worshipper could afford the heavy expense, and in the 
world-wide religious revival commencing in the first century 
of our era such religious pilgrimages became increasingly 
fashionable. 

1 Plutarch, De Is. et Osir. 69. 2 Cf. Hepding, p. 182 f. 

3 Metam. XI. 23, 28, 30. 

4 Cf. Cumont, Mysteries of Mithra, p. 160 ff. 

5 Demosth. Con. Neaerch. 78. 

® Porphyry, De Abstin. IV. 16. 7 Eurip. Hipp. too ff. 

8 Cf. Hartland, Phallism, in Hastings’ E.R.E. IX, p. 827. 

9 VI. 525 ff. 

10 Cf. Aust, 9, 60. ‘‘ Throughout the world of St. Paul we see a mighty 


wandering of pilgrims desirous to wash away their sins at the great shrines 
and to be delivered of their need ”’ (Deissmann, St. Paul, p. 44). 


SELF-MORTIFICATIONS 87 


7. Both in preparation for initiation and in the practice 
of the Mysteries obligations of painful self-mortification were 
laid upon those celebrants who would excel in the cult, or 
become hierophants, or reap the fullest advantages of 
adherence. The period was past when men offered the fruit 
of their bodies for the sin of their souls, but was succeeded 
by another epoch when men, by personal bodily torture and 
discomfort, would expiate their sins and placate the deity. 
The naturalistic origin of the Mysteries, with violent and 
sanguinary survivals, rendered it too easy to retain repulsive 
self-mutilations against which the moral consciousness of 
a humaner era struggled with only partial success. The cruel 
elements were never wholly eliminated, though some 
Mysteries took on a more humane aspect than others, notably 
Orphism and the Hermetic Revelation Religion. Those of 
Phrygia and the related Anatolian cults were among the 
bloodiest ; next came the Syrian cults, but these were 
gradually refined by the development of a solar monotheism. 
That of Isis was the most respectable, while that of Mithra 
was the most sober. But in each and all it was, by a true 
religious instinct, perceived that man must enter into fellow- 
ship of the deity’s sufferings if he would participate in the 
deity’s joy.2. In studying the cruel side of the Mystery- 
cults we must remember that the religious thought of the 
world was struggling with the twofold problem of the 
relation of the material to the spiritual, with but dim rays 
of that light which Christian idealism has shed upon the 
enigma, and of the means whereby man can most securely 
enter into union with God. In anera of religious excitation 
no price was too high to pay to attain quietude of heart. 
The worst forms of self-mortification were generally per- 
formed by, but by no means restricted to, the priesthood. 

The religious self-mutilations were of Oriental provenance.’ 
The most familiar are those of the Galli of the Great Mother 


1 Cf. Keats’ Dionysiac hymn in Endymion. 

2 Cf. Paul’s view of the Christian life as in one aspect a replica of that of 
Jesus (Rom. VI. 1 ff.; Phil. Il. 5 ff.). 

3 Cf. Gray, art. Eunuch in Hastings’ E.R.E. V, p. 580. 


88 THREE STAGES OF A MYSTERY-RELIGION 


(contemptuously called semi viri by Juvenal and Gallae by 
Catullus), which consisted in the laceration of their flesh with 
broken pottery, gashing of their limbs with knives during 
delirious dances and processions, self-flagellations or mutual 
floggings, and finally the perpetration of the culminating 
act of self-effacement in imitation of the act of their patron 
Attis under the pine-tree.1 The male servitors of the 
Ephesian Artemis were eunuchs, as were also the priests of 
Atargatis, the dea Syria. The rites of Bellona, identified 
with Ma, Isis, and Cybele, were equally bloody with those 
of the Great Mother. Her black-robed fanatic: made 
offerings of their own blood and slashed their bodies while 
raving ecstatically with a sword in each hand.* Blood drawn 
from the lacerated thighs of the priests and partaken of 
by the candidates was the seal of initiation.' 

The probation for entry into the Mithraic communion was 
more prolonged and the degrees of preparation more 
numerous and exacting than for other cults, though not so 
orgiastic as those of Anatolia. The number, however, and 
nature of the Mithraic grades are somewhat uncertain, 
perhaps owing to the disturbance of the original economy— 
whatever it was—by the introduction of the astral theology 
of the seven planets and the still later solar theology of the 
twelve signs of the zodiac. Students of Mithraism ‘ usually 
follow Jerome * in affirming the existence of seven grades : 
Raven, Hidden or Secret One (? Cryphius), Soldier, Lion, 
Persian, Sun-runner (Heliodromus) and Father, of which 
the Lion is the most frequently met and that of Father 
the most coveted. Phythian-Adams contends for the num- 
ber six as being correct and original. On the other hand, 
Celsus ’ would indicate perhaps eight grades when he states 


1 Hepding, p. 158 ff. 2 Lactantius, Inst, I. 21. 

3 Tert. Apol. 9. 

¢ E.g. Cumont, Dill, Legge, Toutain, Dieterich, 

5 Ep. ad Laetam, CVII. 2. 

§ The Problem of the Mithraic Grades in Jour. of Roman Studies, vol. II 
(1912), pp. 53-64. ‘ Soldier,’ he holds, was not a grade, but a designation 
which any Mithraist might apply to himself, militia being a frequent re- 
ligious metaphor. 

7 Origen, Con. Cels. VI. 22. 


MITHRAIC GRADES 89 


that in the Persian Mysteries there is a ladder with seven ! 
gates with an eighth gate at the top. The first three stages, 
according to Porphyry,’ preceded initiation, so that the 
subsequent grades marked degrees of spiritual rank after 
initiation. Either the communicant himself or the offi- 
ciating priest or those present, were obliged to wear masks 
corresponding to the Raven and Lion, and a garb corre- 
sponding to the other characters. By the strictest kind of 
freemasonry the initiate was tested at each stage, and his 
spiritual career was marked by ordeals, feigned or real, and 
by an austere discipline which demonstrated his courage, 
sincerity, and faith. He submitted to a baptism of total 
immersion. He was called upon to pass through flame 
with hands bound and eyes blindfolded, or to swim rivers. 
In some cases at least the neophyte jumped down a 
precipice ‘: whether this was done in symbol merely or was 
an actual leap we cannot tell. If an actual jump it must 
have taken place outside the Mithraic chapels, which were 
too small to permit of such a gymnastic feat. A Heddern- 
heim relief* represents a neophyte standing in snow.‘ 
Animal sacrifices, mostly of birds, were made in the chapels. 
At some stage the neophyte was obliged to witness or even 
to take part in a ‘simulated death to produce reverence.’ ’ 
A case is recorded * in which the emperor Commodus, on 
initiation, polluted the chapel by perpetrating an actual 
murder upon a celebrant. What was the nature of this 
symbolic death we may not be certain, though theologically 
it was perhaps viewed as vicarious rather than sacrificial, 
as we may infer from the evidence of the practice of animal 
sacrifices.’ Suggestive symbolic ceremonies were enacted 


1 Reading érrarvuXos for bv Whrvdos * Porphyry, De Antro Nymph. 15. 

2 De Abstin. IV. 16. 4 Ibid. 

5 Cumont, T. e¢ M. II, pl. VIII. 

6 Gregory of Nazianzen, with exaggeration, makes the candidate pass 
through eighty tortures, after which, if he is alive, he is initiated (In 
Julianum, Migne, P.G. XXXVI, pp. 989, 1010). 

7 Lamprid. Commod. 9 in Script. hist. August 1, p. 105. 

8 Ibid. 

® Cumont, T. et M.I, p 322 


g0 THREE STAGES OF A MYSTERY-RELIGION 


at each stage of initiation. Tertullian! records that the 
neophyte, on attaining the degree of ‘Soldier,’ was offered, 
at the point of a sword, a crown or garland, which was then 
put upon his head only to be thrust away with the confession 
‘Mithra is my crown.’ Such a soldier was ‘ signed ’ on the 
forehead with a hot iron. Thenceforth he renounced the 
social custom of wearing a garland even at a banquet. 
According to Porphyry,? on entry upon the next degree, that 
of ‘ Lion,’ the initiate’s lips were purified with honey. 

8, Other admissory rites or customs are often mentioned 
in our sources, e.g. smearing the body with mud * and sub- 
sequent washing, cleansing with gypsum in Orphic usage, 
incubation, the reception of a new name, the reading of 
scriptures,‘ and the mastery of some foreign expressions, 
or secret formulae, enthusiastic pantomimic dancing (‘ for 
there is no mystery without dancing ’),® enforced silences, 
veiling, the donning of new robes, offering of incense, roaring 
like a wild animal—perhaps the original totemistic animal— 
the wearing of masks, the drinking of spirituous liquors. 

Special importance attached to wearing the proper 
vestments * and generally white robes—because of the 
“holy marriage ’ with the deity. At initiations—as seen in 

y § y 
the Villa Item frescoes—a special priestess supervised the 
robing, particularly for the Eleusinian Mysteries.?’ In the 
Bacchic ceremonies a special vestment, the sinmdon, was 
essential. The strict regulations of the Andania inscrip-; 

1 De Corona, 15. 

2 De Antro Nymph. 15. 

3 Cf. Harpocration, dmoudrrwy, 

£ On the use of books cf. Lobeck, p. 193 ; Paus. IV. 27, 5 ; Dem. De Cor. 
259, De Falsa Leg. 199; Manetho, II. 197; Diog. Laer. X. 4. ‘ Let the 
priests hand the books to those appointed therefor ’ (Andania inscr, I. 12), 
The catechesis scene is well illustrated in the frescoes of the Villa of the 
Mysteries (Macchioro, Zagreus, p. 73). Cf. Cook, J.R.S. III, p. 170. 
A similar reading of a divine liturgy is recognizable in the ceiling of one 
of the aisles in the underground basilica at the Porta Maggiore (J.H.S. 
XLIV, p. 95). 

5 Lucian, On Dancing, 15; cf. Dieterich, Kl. Schr., p. 465. 

® Macchioro, Zagreus, p. 44. 

7 Foucart, Mystéres, p. 210. 

8 Cf. Strabo, XVI. 58, 712 C; Meinike, and Suidas, civdoviagtew diovvord few, 


INITIATION AND COMMUNION gl 


tion! regarding the garments and their maximum prices 
are evidence of the value attached to correct ritual dressing 
in antiquity. Another inscription* records the appoint- 
ment of a special priestess to prevent zeal or rivalry in 
such robing being carried to excess. 

Initiates were ‘crowned.’ The Orphics crowned them- 
selves with flowers. The Graeco-Roman vase of Monaco? 
shows, amid some eschatological scenes, an initiate with a 
crown on his head. The pinax of Ninnion ‘ and the relief 
of Lacratides * represent the Eleusinian candidate crowned 
with myrtle, the nuptial plant sacred to Aphrodite. 

In all the Mystery-Religions the candidate was ‘ seated 
on a throne,’ ¢hronosis being, as defined by Hesychius,‘ ‘ the 
first step in initiation,’ so that to be ‘enthroned’ was syno- 
nymous with ‘initiated.’7 According to Dio Chrysostom, 
‘initiators are accustomed, in the so-called enthroning, to 
set up the candidates and dance around them ina circle.’ * 
Aristophanes,® in his burlesque on Socrates, parodies the 
Dionysiac thronosis. The Orphics practised the same rite 
as thronismos, or enthronismos,” which is recognizable in 
one of the scenes in the Villa Item." 


II. INITIATION AND COMMUNION 


After due probation the neophyte was solemnly received 
into membership of the Mystery cult and into fellowship with 
its members and its tutelar deity. Naturally, we know less 
about the process of the initiation proper than about any 


1 ar6 ff. 

2 Foucart, Assoc. relig. no. 4, 7 f. 

® Baumeister, Denkm. d. klass. Alt. III, fig. 77. 

4 Journal internat. d’arch. numism. IV. ’o1, tab. I; Harrison, Proleg. 


fig. 158. 
5 Reinach, Répertoive des reliefs, II, p. 348; cf. schol. on Oed. Col. 715. 
8 @pdvwots KaTapx7 Tepl Tovs wvovpévous. 
7 Rohde, Ki. Schriften, I, p. 298 ; cf. Plato, Euthyd, VII. 277 D. 
8 XII. 387 Dind. de Arnim. I. 163, 33. 
® Clouds, 254 f. 
10 Lobeck, p. 368 f. 
11 Macchioro, Zagreus, p. 32 ff. 


92 THREE STAGES OF A MYSTERY-RELIGION 


other part of the Mysteries1: the rites could not be 
divulged. Hence some stages of initiation are unknown, or 
so obscure as to be unintelligible: e.g. we cannot be sure 
as to the place or meaning of the symbol ‘ A kid, I fell into 
milk,’ in the Orphic confession. The nearest approach to 
an unveiling of the Isiac initiation is found in Apuleius’ 
enigmatic words: ‘ Hear, therefore, but believe what is true. 
I approached the confines of Death and trod the threshold 
of Proserpina: I was carried through all the elements and 
returned again: in the middle of the night I saw the sun 
gleaming in radiant splendour. I approached into the 
presence of the gods below and the gods celestial and 
worshipped before their face’; and he significantly adds: 
‘Behold, I have told you things which, although you have 
heard them, you must not understand.’ ! 

Initiation (tvaditio sacrorum) included ‘ things exhibited,’ 
“acts done’ and ‘things said,’ the emphasis being put on 
the exhibition of the sacra and the symbols of the divine 
passion rather than on specific teaching, of which it is im- 
possible to speak with certainty.? Clement of Alexandria 
assigns to the Lesser Mysteries (Eleusinian) a basis of 
instruction and preparation for the subsequent Greater 
Mysteries, of which he asserts that nothing remains to be 
learned of the universe, but only to contemplate the vision 
and comprehend nature and things,‘ and again, that the 
Mysteries were revealed only ‘after certain purifications 
and preliminary instructions.’ With a view to initiation 
Apuleius speaks of a reading from the Isiac scriptures and 
several (ten) days’ preliminary culturae sacrorum ministertum.® 
Of at least an elementary catechumenate for initiands there 
is ample evidence. In the Orphic frescoes of the Villa Item 
the scene of the toilet and veiling of the initiand is succeeded 
by one in which she stands attentively listening while a 
child priest reads from a roll under the supervision of a » 


1 Cf. Foucart, Mystéres d’Eleusis, p. 389 ff. 

2 Metam. XI. 23. 

* Cf. Lobeck, p. 141 f. ; Macchioro, Zagreus, p. 74. 
* Strom. V. 11 (689; 71, 1); cf. Lobeck, p. 140 f. 

5 Metam. XI. 22, 23 


ELEMENTARY CATECHUMENATE 93 


seated female figure holding another roll in her left hand. 
In the cult of Demeter of Pheneus holy books were em- 
ployed to give a basis of instruction for the greater 
Mysteries. 

That there existed any elaborate dogmatic system of 
esoteric doctrines is improbable.? Synesius* asserts: ‘ Aris- 
totle maintains that it is not necessary for the initiated to 
learn anything, but to receive impressions and to be put 
in a certain frame of mind by becoming worthy candidates.’ 
The ‘things said’ consisted not so much in a disciplina 
arcant as in ritual directions regarding cult symbols,‘ 
liturgical forms, esoteric formulae, the annunciation of the 
candidate’s obligation to suffer in the passion of the god, 
the authorized version of the cult legend,’ the propria 
signa, propria responsa.* The appeal was to the eye, the 
imagination and the emotions rather than to the intellect, 
the main purpose being to induce the initiand through the 
substitution of personality’ (by hallucination, hypnotism, 
or suggestion) to experience his identification with deity. 

It was inevitable, however, as the Mysteries developed 
an apologetic and linked up with the speculation of the 
age, that theory and interpretation should develop pari 
passu, but such praecepia et alia eiusmodt were common 
property.’ The addition of the words religionis secreta 
perdidici in the Attis formula given by Firmicus Maternus,’ 
but not found in the parallel Greek originals, may indicate 
a later stage when more instruction was imparted.” This 
increasing demand for explanation is well illustrated in both 
Hermeticism and Gnosticism, and was accentuated by the 
cosmic pretences of the Mysteries. 

1 Pausanias, VIII. 15, 1. 

2 Cf. Anrich, p. 31; Hatch, p. 289; Kennedy, St. Paul, p. 83. 
® De Dione, to. 

4 Cf. Apul. Apol. 53 ff. 

5 Cf. Farnell, Ency. Brit. 11th ed. XIX, p. 121. 

6 Firm. Mat. De Err. Prof. Rel. 18. 

7 Macchioro, Zagreus, p. 135 ff. 

® Seneca, Ep. XCV. 64. 


9 Ib. 18. 
1° Cf, Dibelius, Die Isiswethe, p. 10. 


94 THREE STAGES OF A MYSTERY-RELIGION 


Taurobolium 


The most impressive sacrament of the Mysteries was the 
taurobolium, or bath in bull’s blood—a rite so costly that 
sometimes the expense was borne by the whole brotherhood.? 
The taurobolium formed part of the ritual of the Cybele- 
Attis cult * from at least the second century, from which 
it may have been borrowed by the Mithraists.‘ The earliest 
form and idea of the rite are uncertain: it is familiar to 
us only in its latest developments in connexion with the 
religious conception of regeneration. “‘In the taurobolium 
there was developed a ritual in which, coarse and mate- 
rialistic as it was, paganism made, in however imperfect a 
form, its nearest approach to the religion of the Cross.” § 
The fullest account has been left by the Christian poet, 
Prudentius,* to whom, as to the other Christian apologists, 
it was an object of special detestation both because of the 
supposed benefits accruing thereto and because of its affinity 
in redemptive conception with the sacrifice of Calvary, of 
which it was viewed as a travesty. A trench was dug over 
which was erected a platform of planks with perforations 
and gaps. Upon the platform the sacrificial bull was 
slaughtered, whose blood dripped through upon the initiate 
in the trench. He exposed his head and all his garments 
to be saturated with the blood; then he turned round 
and held up his neck that the blood might trickle upon his 
lips, ears, eyes, and nostrils; he moistened his tongue with 
the blood, which he then drank as a sacramental act. Greeted 

1 First mentioned in the West in an inscription from Puteoli, C.J.L. 
X. 1596 (A.D. 134). 

AL ERB Ie ONY, FEY te 

3 Cumont contends that the worship of the Great Mother derived this 
rite from the Persian, or Cappadocian, cult of Anahita (T. et M. I, p. 
194 ff.; Revue arch. XII. 1888, p. 132 ff.; Religions or., 2nd ed., pp. 99 ff., 
332-3) with whom agree Dill, p. 556; Kennedy, p. 95. Hepding on the 
other hand claims pure Phrygian origin for the ‘aurobolium, p. 201. 

4 So Dill, pp. 556, 609; Legge, II, p. 259; denied by Cumont (T. et 
M.I, p. 334, Il. p. 179 n.; Mysteries of M., pp. 180-1, 3rd ed. p. 192; 
Roscher, II. 3064) ; Toutain, p. 138. 


5 Dill, p. 555. 
6 Peristeph. X. tort ff. (Hepding, pp. 65-7). 


REGENERATION 98 


by the spectators, he came forth from this bloody baptism 
believing that he was purified from his sin and ‘ born again 
for eternity.’ The efficacy of this consecration was such as 
to last for twenty years,! and was rated so high that many of 
those who had undergone the baptism have left testimony 
on their sepulchral stones of having been renati in aeternum.* 
It cleansed from the past and endowed with the principle 
of immortality. However crude this rite may have been in 
its inception, it was, in its later phases, used of God to give 
men peace in this life and hope beyond the grave. 

A similar sacrament, but less frequent and held in less 
esteem, was the criobolium, or sacrifice of a ram, to which 
was attached the same ritual blood-baptism, with its 
spiritual interpretation. Sometimes it was performed in 
conjunction* with the taurobolium, sometimes as an 
alternative. The chief difference between these kindred 
rites, according to Showerman,‘ lies in this, that the 
criobolium was a sacrament instituted subsequently and on 
analogy of the taurobolium in order to give due prominence 
to the increasing importance of Attis in the myth, whereas 
the taurobolium had a previous history as a sacrifice before 
it became such a conspicuous rite of initiation.* 


Regeneration (Palingenesia) 


Since the great revival of the sixth century B.c. the idea 
of Regeneration * had become familiar, and with it a new 
_ sacramental conception, attested in Orphism, and in the cults 
of Isis, Attis, Dionysos, and Mithra. Every Mystery- 
Religion, being a religion of Redemption, offered means of 
suppressing the old man and of imparting or vitalizing the 
spiritual principle. Every serious mystes approached the 
solemn sacrament of Initiation believing that he thereby 
became ‘twice-born,’ a ‘new creature,’ and passed in a 


LS Op IVES Wale hy 3 Hepding, p. 199. 

3°Cf. CLL) VI. 5103+ VIII. 8203. * The Great Mother of the Gods. 

5 Hepding, 1b. 

® Cf. Lobeck, Aglaoph. p. 797 ff. ; Dieterich. Mithraslit., p. 157 ff. ; Rohde, 
Psyche, Il, pp. 421 ff.; Reitzenstein, Hell. Mysterienrelig., pp. 26, 31 ff. ; 
Kennedy, pp. 69 ff., 107 f., 209 ff.; Macchioro, Zagreus, pp. 80 ff., 127. 


96 THREE STAGES OF A MYSTERY-RELIGION 


real sense from death unto life by being brought into a 
mysterious intimacy with the deity. ‘There can be no 
salvation without regeneration ’ ! was emphatically asserted 
in the Hermetic revelation. This regeneration was conceived 
in various ways, as realistic, physical-hyperphysical, sym- 
bolic, or spiritual. The conception went back ultimately 
to a crude and even physical belief in a divine ‘ begetting,’ * 
by which men became sons of God : into this primitive region 
it is not necessary for our purpose to enter. The co-efficients 
of regeneration may not have been clear to the mystes— 
how much of faith, how much of magic resting upon ex opere 
operato potencies. The universal religious law of ‘ according 
to your faith’ obtained for the ancient worshippers, 
for whom regeneration might signify a solution of the 
pressing problem of dualism, or transformation of character, 
or the basis of spiritual exaltation, or mystic sympathy with 
the divine undying life which secured deathlessness. 

Initiation proper was considered as a ‘ death ’ from which 
believers arose through rebirth: probably for this reason 
the hour of midnight was often chosen as the most appro- 
priate hour for initiation. There was a familiar word-play 
on the words for ‘initiation’ (redAetofa) and ‘ dying’ 
(reXevtav): ‘to die is to be initiated’ says Plato. 
Stobaeus* has preserved a fragment of Themistius (or 
Plutarch ?) which runs: ‘then [the soul] suffers a passion, 
such as that of those who are undergoing initiation into 
great Mysteries ; wherefore also there is a correspondence 
of word to word and act to act in Tedevtdy Tereicbar 
with reference to the Dionysiac or Eleusinian Mysteries. 
Apuleius underwent ‘a voluntary death’ (ad instar uolun- 
tariae mortis) and ‘ approached the realm of Death ’ in order 
thereby to attain his ‘ spiritual birthday ’ (natalem sacrum) * 
in the service of a goddess whose followers were ‘as it were 

1 Corp. Hermet. Poim. ch. XIII. (XIV.) 1. 

* Cf. Windisch, Die Katolischen Briefe, pp. 118-20; Frazer, G.B. 3rd ed 
II, p 247 ff. 

3 Flor, 120, 281V, p.107 M.; cf. Dieterich, Mithrasht., pp. 163-4 ; Hatch, 


p. 289. 
* Metam, XI. 21, 24, reading sacrum. 


DEATH AND REBIRTH 97 


reborn ’ (guodammodo renatos). This drama commemorated 
the death and resurrection of Osiris. In the rites of the 
Great Mother a trench or grave was dug in which the mystes 
was symbolically buried :1 the éauroboliatus arose from the 
trench into a new life. According to Firmicus Maternus ? 
the intending mystes of Attis was admitted as moriturus, 
‘about to die.’ Perhaps some such death is indicated in 
Tertullian’s enigmatic expression sub gladio redimit coronam, 
which he describes as ‘in mimicry of martyrdom.’* An 
interesting example of symbolic burial in the Dionysiac- 
Orphic ‘ rites is given by Proclus*: ‘The priests command 
that the body should be buried except the head in the most 
secret of all the initiations,’ as a result of which ‘ the Spirit 
in usis Dionysiac[divine] and a veritableimage of Dionysos.’° 

To such a death a new life succeeded by a spiritual resur- 
rection. In the Mithraic initiation, after baptism, the 
branding on the forehead, and a sacred meal, Mithra, or the 
presiding priest, introduced imaginem resurrectionis,’ and 
the supposed result of baptism in the Apollinarian and 
Eleusinian Mysteries was regeneration and the forgiveness 
of sins. Hippolytus has preserved a valuable statement * 
of this doctrine of a rebirth in the Eleusinian Mysteries : 
iepov érexe TOTVLA KOUpoV Bpluw Bpywov, TouTéaTLV LaxXUpA LaxUpOY, 
of which he explains wotma as ‘the spiritual begetting, 
which is heavenly, from above ’ and the fayupos as ‘he who 
is thus begotten.’ That the mystes of Attis partici- 
pated in the resurrection of his tutelar is stated by 
Damascius, who, with Isidorus, entered the Ploutium at 
Hierapolis: ‘I dreamed that I had become Attis, and that 
I was being initiated by the Mother of the Gods in the 


1 Hepding, p. 196. 

2 De Err. Prof. Rel. 18. 

3 De Praes. Haer. 40; De Corona, 15. 

4 Dieterich, 7b. p. 163. 

5 In Plat. Theol. IV. 9, p. 139 (Dieterich, 7b.; Hepding, p. 196). 

8 Ad Craty., p. 82. 

Tert. De Praes. Haer. 40. 

Id. De Bap. 5, ‘in regenerationem et impunitatem periuriorum;’ 
Phil. V. 8, p. 164; Dieterich Mithraslit,, p. 138. 


7 
8 
9 


8 


98 THREE STAGES OF A MYSTERY-RELIGION 


festival called Hilaria, inasmuch as it was intended to signify 
that our salvation from death had been accomplished.’ ? 
Sallustius * informs us that in the same Phrygian rites the 
newly initiated ‘ received nourishment of milk as if they were 
being reborn.’ For the ¢auroboliatus the sacrament marked 
his religious birthday, nataliciwm.' | 

The more spiritual and mature a Mystery became, the more 
clamant grew the demand for regeneration, and the more 
the intuitions found expression in words rather than in 
symbol. Hence in the Hermetic revelation the mode, con- 
tent, and results of regeneration occupy much attention. 
One interesting section ‘ of the Corpus Hermeticum deals with 
this topic. Tat reminds his father, Hermes, that the latter 
had asserted that ‘ no one can be saved without regeneration,’ 
the manner of which he had promised to reveal to him. 
Purified from worldliness, Tat now begs the boon, to which 
Hermes replies: ‘ Spiritual wisdom is found in silence, and 
the seed [birth] is the true good’ (2). By the will of God the 
new birth is accomplished by which the ‘ begotten ’ of God 
becomes ‘divine’ and ‘Son.’ Tat thereupon beholds the 
supersensual Vision and undergoes a transformation in his 
body by which he becomes other than he was. The author 
of the new birth is ‘ the Son of God,’ ‘ the One Man ’ by the 
will of God (4). The supersensual Truth is then revealed (6), 
after which he is released from twelve deadly sins (7) by 
ten divine Powers (11). Spiritual rebirth is an escape from 
the delusions of the body (13) in order by ‘the essential 
birth ’ to become ‘ divine and Son of the One’ (14). 

Tat attains the Ogdoad, home of the Divine, or the 
Spiritual World,> where he hears from his father ‘ the Hymn 
of Regeneration,’ which cannot be taught : 


‘Let all Nature hear the Hymn .. . let every bar of the 


1 Cited Hepding, p. 197: dep édyXou Thy EF “Acdou yeyorviay judy cwrnplay. 
2 De Diis et Mundo, 4. ; 

*) CL L260, 

4 Powmandres XIV. (XIII.); text in Reitzenstein, pp. 339-48. 

5 Cf. Bousset, Himmelreise; Kroll, Lehven d. Hermes Trismegistos, 


p- 362. 


HYMN OF REGENERATION | 99 
Abyss be opened. . . . I will hymn the Lord of Creation, 


the All and One. Let the heavens open . . . let the im- 
mortal Cycle of God receive my praise. ... Let us all 
together give praise to him. ... He is the light of my 


spirit ; his be the blessing of my powers. Ye powers of 
mine hymn the One and All; join all of ye in song with my 
will. Holy Knowledge, enlightened from thee and by thee 
the spiritual light.1_ I rejoice as I raise my hymn in spiritual 
joy. . . . Hymn, O Truth, the Truth, O Goodness, the Good. 
Life and Light, from you comes as to you returns our 
thanksgiving. I give thee thanks, O Father, thou potency 
of my powers: I give thee thanks, O God, the power of 
my potencies. Thine own Word through me hymns thee: 
through me receive the all by thy Word, my reasonable 
(spiritual) sacrifice. . . . Accept from all reasonable sacrifice. 
Thou pleroma in us, O Life, save us ; O Light, enlighten us ; 
O God, make us spiritual. The Spirit guardsthy Word... . 
Thou art God, and thy Man thus cries to thee. . . . From 
the Eternal I received blessing and what I seek. By thy 
will have I found rest.’ 


To which Tat responds with a Thanksgiving (21) : 


‘ By thy Spirit, O Father, I declare what I perceive. To 
thee, author of my new birth, I, Tat, offer reasonable 
[spiritual] sacrifices. O God and Father, thou art the 
Lord, thou art the Spirit. Accept from me the reasonable 
sacrifices which thou requirest: for by thy will all things 
are accomplished.’ 


Hermes closes the Dialogue with the significant words 
which contain the gist of the whole experience: ‘ thou hast 
come to a spiritual knowledge of thyself and our Father.’ * 

A similar Thanksgiving is found at the close of the Perfect 
Word, the translation of which is given on p. 242. 

Such a spiritual regeneration (voepa ryéveors, 1) ryéveots 
THs Qeotnros) is also prominent in the so-called Liturgy 
of Mithra, which undoubtedly betrays Hermetic kinship. 
It will suffice to translate the Prayer of Invocation ° : 


1 Text corrupt: cf. Reitzenstein’s note. 
2 voep@s éyvws ceautoy Kal rov marépa Tov nuérepov. 


3 Dieterich, Mithrasliturgie, 2nd ed. p. 10,1 34 


too THREE STAGES OF A MYSTERY-RELIGION 


‘O Lord, if it please thee, announce me to the greatest 
God, . . . I, a man, son of A. and born of the mortal womb 
of B. and of spermatic substance, that he to-day, having 
been born again by thee, out of so many myriads rendered 
immortal, in this hour according to the good pleasure of God 
in his surpassing goodness, seeks to worship thee and prays 
to thee to the utmost of his human powers.’ . 


And the Hymn of Regeneration in the same Liturgy ?: 


‘Hail, Lord, potentate of water; hail, ruler of earth ; 
hail, master of spirit. . . . Lord, having been regenerated, 
I depart in exaltation, and having been exalted I die. 
Born again for rebirth of that life-giving birth, and delivered 
unto death, I go the way, as thou hast established, as thou 
hast decreed, as thou hast created the sacrament.’ 


Communion and Identification with God 

Closely allied with Regeneration and common to all the 
Mysteries was the faith in communion, or identification with 
God. ‘‘ It was the great merit of the Mysteries that they 
established and cultivated a communion between the human 
and the divine, and that they opened ways in which man 
could draw nearer God.’’* The relationship to deity was 
imperfectly conceived, and the co-efficients and issues often 
of a too sensuous and magical character. But that the 
Mysteries offered a certain satisfaction to the religious 
instinct *? which seeks to know God and come near to 
Him is attested by their remarkable success and by the 
testimony of the initiates. The union with God effected 
by the Mysteries was vouchsafed, expressed, and maintained 
in various ways. 

(a) The mystes was brought into a mystic ineffable con- 
dition in which the normal functions of personality were in 
abeyance ‘ and the moral strivings which form character 


AOD. 1451.27, 

* Gardner, Relig. Exper. of St. Paul, p. 100. 
3 Cf. Mackintosh, Originality, etc. p. 19. 

4 Cf. Macchioro, Zagreus, p. 152 ff. 


ECSTASY IOI 


virtually ceased or were relaxed, while the emotional and 
intuitive were accentuated. These states were Ecstasy 
(éxoraois) and Enthusiasm (év@ovetacuos), both of which 
might be induced by vigil and fasting, tense religious 
expectancy, whirling dances, physical stimuli, the con- 
templation of the sacred objects, the effect of stirring music,} 
inhalation of fumes, revivalistic contagion (such as happened 
in the Church at Corinth), hallucination, suggestion, and all 
the other means belonging to the apparatus of the Mysteries. 
These two kindred abnormal states of consciousness, often 
indistinguishable, are united by Proclus when he speaks of 
men ‘going out of themselves to be wholly established 
in the Divine and to be enraptured.’ * 

In ecstasy * the devotee was lifted above the level of his 
ordinary experience into an abnormal consciousness of an 
exhilarating condition in which the body ceased to be a 
hindrance to the soul. Ecstasy might be of a passive charac- 
ter resembling a trance, or of an active orgiastic character 
of excitation resembling what Plato calls ‘ divine frenzy.’ 
According to the means of induction, the temperament of the 
initiate, and his spiritual history, ecstasy might range any- 
where from non-moral delirium‘ to that consciousness of 
oneness with the Invisible and the dissolution of painful 
individuality which marks the mystics of all ages. 


“In ecstasy, in the freeing of the soul from the hampering 
confinement of the body, in its communion with the deity, 
powers arise within it of which it knows nothing in the daily 
life hampered by the body. It now becomes free as spirit 
to hold communion with spirits: also released from 
transiency, it is endowed with capacities to behold what 
only the eyes of the spirit can behold, that which is removed 
beyond time and space.’’ ° 


Physically the condition was one of anaesthesia, uncon- 


1 Cf. Aristotle, Pol. VIII. 55. 

2 In Rempub. II, p. 108 (Kroll). 

3 Cf. Rohde, Psyche, II. 14-22 ; Inge, Phil. of Plotinus, II. 132-62. 
4 Cf. Philo, Quis rer. div. haeres ? 51, C.-W. 249, M. 508. 

® Rohde, II, p. 20. 


1oz2 THREE STAGES OF A MYSTERY-RELIGION 


scious of pain or of anything hostile or disconcerting in the 
surroundings. There is ample evidence that the Bacchae, 
for example, were insensate to pain and endued with 
preternatural strength 1; so also were the priests of Cybele 
and the priests and priestesses of Ma. This anaesthesia to 
pain * is a religious phenomenon known in all ages, especially 
in great revivals, and in many forms, from that of the Indian 
Yogi to the Christian martyr whose ecstasy took away the 
terrors of agonizing death by imparting miraculous fortitude. 
We may assume that this semi-physical, semi-psychic state 
was much coveted by the initiates, as the ‘ pneumatic’ 
condition was among the Christians of Corinth. To be lifted 
above sense to behold the beatific vision and become “ incor- 
porate in’’ God was the end sought in ecstasy, and the 
satisfaction sought, or derived, was of various kinds, physical 
or sensuous, aesthetic and intellectual. 

In the more spiritual Mysteries the profoundest expression 
is given to the idea of ecstasy. In the Liturgy of Mithra 
the suppliant prays ‘abide with me in my soul: leave me 
not,’ and ‘ that I may be initiated and that the holy Spirit 
may breathe within me.’* The communion becomes so 
intimate as to pass into identity: ‘I am thou and thou 
art I.’4 Through such religious experiences men learned 
to seek that coniunctione deorum qua homines soli eorum 
dignitate perfruunturs 

In this respect of communion we are able particularly to 
observe a tendency which obtrudes at so many points in the 
historic course of the Mysteries, namely, that Mysteries 
conduce to Mysticism, that through the spiritualizing of the 
interpretative faculty the purely symbolical recedes before 
the deepening of intuition and experience. The Mysteries 
held, in common with most religious philosophy of the time, 


1 Cf. Eurip. Bacchae, 757. 

* Cf. Inge, Hastings’ E.R.E. V. 158b. Such anaesthesia is described by 
Nonnus, Dionysiaca, XIV. 384~—5, and in striking words by Iamblichus, 
De Myst. III. 4, p. 110 (Parthey). 

3 Mithraslit., p. 14, 1.24; p. 4, 1. 13. 

* Pap. Graect Musei Lugd. II. 141; Kenyon, Greek Papyri, 116 f£. 

5’ Ps Apuleius, Asclepius, VII. 


MYSTICISM AND PHILOSOPHY 103 


the doctrine of an Ascent of the Soul! asa phase of salvation 
toward which ecstasy was valued as one important step. 
On the experience of ecstasy the philosophic thought of 
later paganism laid hold by a revulsion from arid doctrinaire 
dialecticism to a self-attesting experience of truth, corre- 
sponding to Schleiermacher’s revolt from _ theological 
scholasticism. The Orphic and Dionysiac notes sounded 
louder as the West turned increasingly toward the East for 
new: life. If the Mysteries supplied the phenomena of 
ecstasy philosophy attempted to analyse the psychology of 
a condition which it confessed to be ineffable. But ecstasy 
in its highest form has always been a rare experience even 
to cultivated mystics. Plotinus, than whom there never 
lived a more earnest mystic, was favoured with the beatific 
vision only four times during the years of Porphyry’s 
residence with him.? Porphyry himself confesses that he 
enjoyed the ecstatic state only once, and that not until his 
sixty-eighth year; and with that most practical of all 
mystics, St. Paul, ecstasy was an exceptional favour (2 Cor. 
XII. 2 ff.). In Philo’s religious philosophy this much-coveted 
mystic condition occupies an important place. But Philo 
knows also another species of ecstasy akin to inspiration 
or enthusiasm exemplified in Hebrew and early Christian 
prophetism and in the prophetic inspiration of ethnic 
religions.‘ Of such an experience, which Philo had himself 
experienced a thousand times, he has left an interesting 
account.® 

Finally, if the mysticism of the Mysteries seems to us 
sometimes crude and unedifying, it gains in interest when 
we remember that it was in some degree the harbinger and 
later the ally of that rich philosophic-religious mysticism of 
closing paganism, which, in sublimated form, has become 
the perennial possession of Christianity through Philo, 

1 Cf. Bousset, Archiv f. Religionswiss. IV, p. 145 fi. 

2 Porph. Vita Plot.. 23. 

5 Cf. Bousset, Religion des Judentums, 2nd ed. pp. 516 f.; Kennedy’ 
Philo’s Contribution, p. 221 ff.; Inge, II. p. 154 f. 


4 Cf. Reitzenstein, Poim. p. 220 ff. 
5 De Migrat. Abr. 7 (M.I. 441, C.-W. 34) 


1o4 THREE STAGES OF A MYSTERY-RELIGION 


Plotinus, and the Neo-Platonists, Dionysius the Areopagite, 
Augustine, and the Christian Platonists. 

Enthusiasm was the kindred state of communion often 
accompanying and confused with ecstasy,! but ‘‘ enthoustas- 
mos was from the first mainly a theological conception, while 
ekstasis, on the other hand, comes from the domain of medical 
terminology, and, so far as known, was not applied till long 
after Plato’s day to the rapturous state of a soul delivered 
from earthly conditions.’”’*? Enthusiasm was the immediate 
‘ inspiration ’ or replenishing of the personality by the deity, 
defined by Plutarch® as ‘an affective condition of the soul 
produced by some divine power.’ The subjects became évGeoz, 
‘in God,’ xatexyopuevor x tod Beod, ‘ possessed of the deity,’ 
and ‘ full of God.’ The term enthousiasmos, with its cognate 
enthousiasis, was probably first employed by Plato, and 
the verb évOovc.ay first by Aeschylus‘ as a synonym of 
Baxyevew. But to these terms and their correlatives a new 
prominence was given by the rapid spread of the Mysteries 
(with the doctrine of union with deity so fundamental to their 
theology), by the increasing prevalence of the ecstatic ex- 
periences cultivated in these individualistic religions,’ and 
finally by the mystic theology of closing paganism. The 
idea of ‘inspiration,’ not unknown before the rise of the 
Mysteries, had a very wide application especially in the 
prophetic theology of the ancients. Under Enthusiasm 
were included by the Greeks all forms of Mantic, or prophecy 
and soothsaying, also revelations in dreams and visions, 
such revelations being the direct utterances of the deity. 
The songs of inspired poets are the product of enthusiasm, 
according to Plato; while the Latin poets, e.g. Lucretius, 
are emphatic in claiming the inspiration of a furor poeticus. 
Plutarch ® enumerates the varieties of enthusiasm as 

1 Cf. Rohde, II, p. 19: Dieterich, Mithvaslit., p. 98. 

2? Radermacher, in Hastings’ E.R.E., V. 316. 

3 De Amore, 16; cf. Aristotle’s definition of it as ‘ an emotional condition 
of the character of the soul ’ (Pol. VIII. 13404, 11). 

4 Radermacher, 2b. 


> Cf. Reitzenstein, Poim., p. 200. 
& De amore, 16, 


ENTHOUSIASMOS 105 


prophetic, Dionysiac, the frenzy produced by the Muses, and 
amatory. Inallforms of enthusiasm there is the same under- 
lying idea that ‘‘ the entheos is wholly in the power of the 
god, the god acts and speaks with him: his own self- 
consciousness has disappeared.” } 

These ideas found congenial soilin the Mysteries. Plutarch 
has likened the Bacchic frenzy to prophecy, and says that 
“the rites of Cybele and Pan very much resemble the orgies 
of Dionysos.’* It is significant that the music of Phrygia— 
the homeland of orgiastic-mystic cults—was regarded as 
specially appropriate for the Bacchic and Corybantic dances.* 
Aristotle declares that the strains of the Phrygian musician, 
Olympus, ‘make souls enthusiastic,’ and refers to the 
flute as an instrument ‘not affecting character, but 
orgiastic.’ ‘ 

That the Mysteries cultivated these abnormal psychopathic 
conditions such as were manifested in Hebrew prophecy and 
later in the psychological phenomena of the three pre-eminent 
centuries of Christian mysticism, the first, fourteenth, and 
seventeenth, cannot be disputed. The spiritual nature of 
man in seeking union with God progressively purified and 
elevated the conception of ecstasy and enthusiasm from 
physical and artificial conditions to be channels of divine 
truth—from that enthusiasm too truly symbolized in the 
wine-god, Dionysus, to that of Philo, in which the thankful 
spirit ‘is intoxicated with the sober intoxication,’*> and 
that of Plotinus, in which the soul, elevated above the 
shadows of earth, ‘ returns to its Father ’ and ‘ enjoys posses- 
sion of the Heavenly Love.’ * Orgiasm was forced to retreat 
before quietism. 

Against an original dissociation of ecstasy and enthusiasm 
from ethical demands or a precarious alliance therewith the 
religious genius of the great mystics made ethical considera- 


1 Rohde, II. 19. 2 Ib. 
3 Jb.; cf. Proclus, In Plat. Alc. I, p. 479; In Plat. Remp. 1. 84; Cicero, 
De Div. I. 114. 


* Pol. VIII. 1340 a, 103 1341 a, 21. 
5 Leg. alleg. 1. 26, Mang. 60; C.-W. I. 84 
® Enn. VI. 9, 9. 


106 THREE STAGES OF A MYSTERY-RELIGION 


tions a requisite condition for a true enjoyment of these 
religious privileges. Thus, Plato says that the divinely 
possessed ‘take on the character and qualities of the 
divine, so far as man may participate in God ’1; and Philo 
asserts that it is impossible for a worthless man to become 
an interpreter of God, ‘for, properly speaking, no wicked man 
can be inspired, which is appropriate only for a wise 
man,’ ? 

(6) The Mystery-cults introduce us to another conception 
of communion with God at first sight very alien to our ideas, 
but one of far-reaching importance in religious history and 
finding a counterpart in modern Christian philosophy, 
viz. Deification, Demortalizing, or Apotheosis (amo@éwars, 
aTrabavaticp0s, Oeorroinots, OewOhvac)2 It is rather the 
form than the content of the idea that appears so strange 
to moderns. Clement of Alexandria employed a language 
intelligible alike to pagan and Christian ; he writes: 


‘If anyone knows himself he shall know God, and by 

knowing God he shall be made like unto Him’; and again 
‘that man with whom the Logos dwells . . . is made like 
| God and is beautiful ... that man becomes God, for God so 
\ wills it’*®; and ‘the Logos of God became man that from 
| man you might learn how man may become God.’ * Further, 
that the true (Christian) Gnostic ‘has already become 
| God,’ ? 


| 


i 


| In the same strain Lactantius * affirms that the chaste 


‘man (calcatis omnibus terrenis) will become ‘identical in 
‘all respects with God’ (consimilis Deo). Even more 
jemphatically the Greek father, Methodius, taught ‘ every 


/ believer must through participation in Christ be born a 
{ 

1 Phaedr. 253 A. 

2 Quis rer. div. her. sit. LII. (Mang. I. 510, C.-W. III. 259). 

3 Cf. Reitzenstein, Hell. Mysterienrelig. p. 29 ff.; Dieterich, Abraxas, 
104; Wendland, Hell.-rom. Kultur, p. 73 ff.; Fowler, Rom. Ideas of 
Deity, p. 98 ff. 

Se P aed. sue tile 

8/76. 5. 7 Protry. VIII. 4. 

6 Sivom. IV, 23 (p. 632). ® Div. Inst. VI. 23. 


DEIFICATION 107 


Christ,’ and the master of orthodoxy did not hesitate to | 
say dogmatically, ‘He was made man that we might be/( 
made God.’* We should remind ourselves that though 
“God ’ is the literal rendering of @eds or deus, ‘ Divine’ 
might better convey to our minds what these terms con- 
veyed to the minds of men living in the Graeco-Roman 
world, to whom they were of a more fluid nature than 
they have since long become in scholastic theology. The 
conception of divinizing steadily took on more concrete 
form, a process accelerated by the many lines of approach 
between Oriental and Occidental ideas of the relation of 
human and divine. Even in Greece and Rome there 
were legends of men who, by conspicuous deserts, had been 
promoted to gods, as there were also legends of gods who 
had descended to earth. The Roman dead became Manes, 
and so divine. Greek heroes, like Brasidas, had after death 
been accorded divine honours. But in Hellenistic-Oriental 
thought the essential unity of man and God was enforced 
by, first, Orphic mystic speculations * as to the Descent 
and Ascent of the soul, emphasizing the native divinity of 
man, and professing to make initiates divine instead of 
mortal through sacraments which enabled the soul to make 
Ascent. Secondly, the spread of Egyptian-Hellenistic ration- 
alism ‘ as to the origin of the accepted deities, dating back 
from the time of Alexander the Great, who was informed by 
Leo, an Egyptian priest, that heroes and gods alike had been 
elevated from the ranks of humanity,’ a theory to which 
later Hecataeus, under Ptolemy I, gave more definite 
expression by asserting that the original gods were the 
heavenly gods, sun, moon, etc., while the earthly gods, such 
as Zeus and Isis, had been mortals divinized because of their 
beneficent deeds to mankind. It remained for Euhemerus 
to systematize and popularize this theology in his epochal 
1 Cited, Inge, Christian Mysticism, p. 357. 


2 De Incarn. 54, iva deoranOduev ; cf. Orat. c. Arianos, I. 39. 
3 “ Die Mystik hat den Glauben an die Géttlichkeit der Menschenseele 


gestarkt ” (Wendland, p. 71). 
* Fowler, p. 100, calls Egypt ‘‘ The well-head of all these notions.” 


5 Augustine, De Civ. Dei, VIII. 5. 


1o8 THREE STAGES OF A MYSTERY-RELIGION 


€ 


Sacred History: he “simply denied their [gods’] existence 
as a species, so to speak, distinct from man.”’! This doctrine, 
in union with Greek anthropomorphism, spread like contagion 
and worked a revolution in the Roman conception of deity. 
What had happened before might be repeated : heaven was 
opened to candidates from earth. Thirdly, the attraction 
of pantheism and the philosophic teaching, especially of 
the Platonists and Stoics, that man is truly divine. In 
fact, “‘ through the course of Greek religious thought a single 
thread may be traced, in the essential unity of man and 
God.” * The pantheistic tendency is most pronounced in 
the Hermetic theology, and, in a less degree, in Orphism, 
while the later view of the essential kinship of God and man 
meets us in such Stoics as Seneca and Epictetus, and in an 
eclectic like Cicero. ‘ We are his offspring’ was a Stoic 
sentiment cited with approval by Paul. Seneca says that 
“a good man differs only in point of time from God, whose 
disciple and imitator he is.’ Epictetus speaks eloquently of 
the security accruing to man from the fact that God is his 
Father: ‘Do you suppose that God would suffer His own 
son to be enslaved?’ ‘ Know, then, that thou art a god,’ 
says Cicero,’ ‘and inferior in no whit to the celestials 
save in immortality.’ Fourthly, Daemonism, which con- 
tributed to facilitate the passage from human to divine. 
Lastly, above all was the God-Man conception, which, 
rising in the East, and advancing from vague intuitions 
and impalpable premonitions, and assuming diverse forms, 
modified all ancient pagan and even Christian theology. 
The steps by which such a conception acquired universal 
prevalence elude us. The primitive belief in the divine 
origin and function of kings, the practice of divinizing the 
dead or living rulers of the Ptolemaic dynasty and the 
Diadochi and the subsequent imperial cult familiarized men 
with acknowledging in individuals who rose above ordinary 


1 Fowler, 7b. 

? Mrs. Adam, Greek Ideals of Righteousness, p. 67. 

3 De Repub. VI. 17; N.D. II. 61. 

* Cf. Oakesmith, Religion of Plutarch, pp. 120 ff., 171 f. 


MODES OF DIVINIZING 109g 


human stature a certain divinity and regarding them as 
visible deities, or god-men. The increasing importance of 
outstanding individuals in Hellenistic and Roman times was 
one of the most marked features of the new age which reacted 
directly upon theology. These individuals, of whom 
Alexander was the first, manifested in such an unmistakeable 
fashion their godlike capacities for bestowing universal 
tangible blessings upon mankind that they were inevitably 
after death, and sometimes during their lifetime, in deorum 
numerum relati, Amid the distress of the pre-Christian 
centuries who shall say how far the wish was father to the 
thought ? Men were craving for a praesens deus, a visible 
manifestation of deity, such an epiphany as should right the 
wrongs of the world, heal its bleeding wounds, and give 
social peace and economic security. Prayers and thanks- 
giving were directed to these incarnate Benefactors as visi- 
ble gods. In the year 48 B.c. the Asiatic cities set up an 
inscription to Julius Caesar hailing him as ‘ God manifest 
and universal Saviour of human life.’1 Similarly, Augustus 
was recorded as ‘ Ancestral God and Saviour of the whole 
human race,’ * whose name Ovid in a prayer for grace couples 
with the gods with the significant words ‘than whom he 
is more tangible.’ : 

The Mystery-Religions did not overlook such fruitful 
conceptions, which they had anticipated. They undertook 
to effect such apotheosis not merely for outstanding per- 
sonalities but for the humblest candidate. Divinizing 
was conceived in the main in three ways, which, however, 
cannot be treated separately: (1) mystic identification 
with the tutelar; (2) endowment with deathlessness and 
transformation into the divine substance ; (3) in a more 
refined form, in the divine indwelling, by which the material 
man became spiritual. By mystic identification Lucius, 
after the sacrament of initiation, was ‘ arrayed like the sun 


1 Dittenberger, Sylloge, 2nd ed. I. 347; 3rd ed. 760. 

* Greek Inscriptions in the British Museum, 894; cf. Praesens Divus 
habebitur Augustus, Hor. Caym. III. 5, 2. 

3 Ep Ponto, I. 1, 63: ‘quibus est manifestior ipse.’ 


tio THREE STAGES OF A MYSTERY-RELIGION 


and set up like an image of the god’ before the spectators.? 
The mystes of Attis became himself Attis.2 On an Orphic 
tablet, found at Petelia and now in the British Museum, the 
deceased declares, ‘I ama child of Earth and Starry Heaven ; 
but my race is of Heaven.’ On a Compagno tablet, now in 
the Museum of Naples, the deceased is addressed as ‘ Happy 
and blessed one, thou shalt be god instead of mortal.’' 
In a more elevated form we meet the same thought in the 
Hermetic religion. A Greek papyrus has preserved a 
magical prayer based on Hermetic theology, in which occur 
the words: ‘ Enter thou into my spirit and my thoughts my 
whole life long, for thou art I and I am thou; thy name I 
guard asacharmin my heart’ ‘; inasimilar prayer we read : 
‘I know thee, Hermes, and thou knowest me: I am thou, 
and thou art I.’* The second mode of divinizing, by 
endowing with immortality, was first popularized by Orphism, 
and became during the Graeco-Roman era one mode of 
conceiving immortality. According to Greek, and even 
Latin, theology, the gods differed from men only in being 
immortal.’ Consequently, to render a mortal immortal was 
to deify him. Such was the significance of the triumphant 
Orphic faith—‘ a God instead of mortal.’ This demortaliz- 
ing (ara@avaticpos) is the subject of a thanksgiving in 
the so-called Liturgy of Mithra: ‘I aman... born of 
mortal womb . . . having been this day begotten again by 
thee, out of so many myriads rendered immortal in this 
hour by the good will of God in his abounding goodness.’ ’ 
‘This is the good end for those who have attained know- 
ledge, namely, Deification,’ we read in the Hermetic 
literature,* which recalls the famous statement of Clement of 

1 Metam. XI. 24. 

2 Hepding, p. 197. 

8 Harrison, Proleg. p. 586 f. 

* Leemans, Papyri Graeci Musei Lugd. II. 141; cited also Dieterich, 
Abraxas, p. 196, Reitzenstein, Poim. p. 17. 

5 Kenyon, Greek Papyri in the British Museum, I. p. 116; Reitzenstein, 
1b. p. 20. 

CE Rohde, Griech. Religion, p. 11 (Kl. Schr. 322) ; Psyche, Il, p. 2. 

7 Mithraslit., p. 12, 2. 

8 Poim. I. 26. 


DIVINE INDWELLING III 


Alexandria that the true Gnostic ‘ practises being God.’ }! 
In the thanksgiving prayer of the Perfect Word occurs the 
expression ‘ Saved by thee... we rejoice that even in our 
mortal bodies thou didst deify us by the Vision of Thyself.’ * 
The same thought is familiar in an Orphic ritual prayer. 

A third phase, the divine indwelling, expressed a religious 
experience which formed a ground common to the Mysteries 
and Platonic and Stoic philosophy and to Christianity. The 
experience and modes of expression admitted of great 
varieties. The devotee in the Liturgy of Mithra prays :) 
‘abide with me in my soul: leave me not,’‘ and ‘ that I} 
may be initiated and that the Holy Spirit may breathe 
within me.’* A magical prayer in the British Museum runs, 
“Come to me, Lord Hermes, as babes to women’s wombs,’ ° 
a phase of mysticism which recalls many of the seemingly 
exaggerated cravings of some of the Christian Mystics.’ 
This condition of divine indwelling is the counterpart to that 
of enthusiasm whereby the mystic is in a real sense ‘in God ’ 
by substitution or interpenetration of personality. The 
Mysteries were thus familiar with that mutual indwelling 
of human and divine so conspicuous in the mystical aspects 
of Paulinism, and still more in the thought of the Fourth 
Gospel, and in the highest reaches of Christian experience. 
To Paul ‘in Christ,’ ‘in the Spirit,’ and ‘Christ in you’ 
were synonymous expressions of a psychological reality. 
The language of the Fourth Gospel, ‘I in you and you in 
Me,’ conveyed a familiar meaning to a world saturated in 
mystic thought. A London papyrus‘ has preserved a 


1 wederg etvar Beds. 

* Greek text in Reitzenstein, Hell. Mysterienrelig. 114. The Latin 
translation (Asclepius, 41) weakly renders: ‘Numine salvati tuo... 
gaudemus quod nos in corporibus sitos aeternitati fueris consecrare 
dignatus.’ 

8’ Comparetti, Laminette orfiche, p. 25; cf. I.G.S.I. 642, Diels, Frag. 
3rd ed. p. 177 n. 20. 

4 Mithraslit., p. 14, 24. 

P16 DL 4s 83; 

§ Kenyon, ib.; Dieterich, Mithraslit., p. 97. 

7 As Madame Guyon, in a trance or ecstasy, became married to Christ. 

8 Wessely, Gr. Zauberpapyri, 122, 37 f. 


riz THREE STAGES OF A MYSTERY-RELIGION 


magical (Hermetic) prayer: ‘ for thou art I, and I am thou ; 
thy name is mine, for I am thy image (ezdolon).’ If the lan- 
guage of the ancient initiates seems to us very impalpable, 
elusive, and exaggerated, so also is frequently the language 
in which those who have seen the Vision Beatific have 
endeavoured to label religious experiences, the reality and 
power of which cannot be doubted. Philosophy came to the 
aid of the Mysteries in asserting, ‘ God is nigh thee, is with 
thee, is within thee. . . . A holy spirit dwells within us, a 
scrutinizer and guardian of our good and evil.’ Epictetus 
teaches: ‘ You are bearing a God with you though you know 
it not. Do you think I mean some external god of silver or 
gold? It is within yourself you carry him, and you do not 
perceive that it is he whom you profane by impure thoughts 
and unworthy actions. If even an image of God were 
present you would not dare to act as you do, but when God 
himself is within you, hearing and seeing all, are you not 
ashamed of such conduct and thoughts, ignorant of your own 
nature ?’? 

(c) Another conception of communion with the deity in 
_the Mysteries was a religious Marriage ‘—a conception the 
\roots of which can be traced back to the Egyptian and 

Asiatic belief and practice of copulation with deity. When 
we compare the remote origins of this religious idea with its 
expression in Christian mysticism and hymnology we see 
how potent spiritual idealism has been in religious evolution. 
Other obvious human relationships being employed to 
represent the union of man and God, it was inevitable that 
the marriage relationship should be pressed into like service. 
Mystics of all ages have seen therein the most adequate 
symbol of the ineffably intimate union of the soul with 
God.‘ Such synousia had a double underlying idea: first, 

1 Seneca, Ep. 41, 2. 

a Discn liso. 


3 Cf. Lobeck, pp. 608, 649 ff.; Dieterich, Mithvaslit. 3rd ed. pp. 121- 
34; Macchioro, Zagreus, p. 70 ff.; Reitzenstein, Poim. 226 ff.; Hel. 
Mysterienrel. p. 21 ff.; Foucart, Mystéres d’Eleusis, p. 475 ff. ; Bousset, 
Hauptprobleme, ch. VI; Anrich, p. 77. 

4 Cf. Underhill, Mysticism, p. 495 f. 


THE ‘SACRED MARRIAGE’ 113 


an erotic-anthropomorphic, in which synousia has the 
character of an offering or sacrifice (of purity) ; secondly, the 
magical, whereby the worshippers participated in the god’s 
Mana and secured life and salvation. There were three 
stages of growing refinement whereby the early worshipper 
joins hands across the centuries with the great mystics.} 
First,? the ‘ holy marriage ’ corresponded to a literal act of 
synousia with the deity through his priests, or phallos, or 
otherwise. Such a ceremonial could not persist in face of 
an increasingly worthy sense of man and God. As society 
regulated the relations between the sexes phallic ideas were 
forced to retreat. At first the difference between legend and 
poetry was not marked. Of a form of communion which 
excluded males Plutarch records that the Egyptians believe 
‘it is not impossible for the Spirit of God to have intercourse 
with a woman’ kal tivas évtexely apyas yevéoews, avdpl 
8 ove éotr cvppuéis mpds Oeov ovd’ outdtia cepatos.2 This 
limitation to women shows that the time had not yet come 
when the soul could be regarded as the spouse of God. The 
curious story of Josephus about Paulina indicates how a lady 
of rank and education could be induced to enter an Isiac 
temple to hold intercourse with Anubis.‘ This was probably 
not an isolated case, but so realistic was the antiquated 
formula that the danger for devout and credulous minds was 
obvious. The wife of the King-Archon at Athens was joined 
in a ritual marriage at the festival of the Anthesteria with 
Dionysus, commemorating a more literalistic period. 


1 “Tt seems to be a fact of religious history that the most primitive 
and crude conceptions of a union with God and those of the most exalted 
mysticism always meet in those religious images in which men think”’ 
(Dieterich, p. 134). 

2 Originally sacred marriages occurred with animals, e.g. Pasiphae, 
Europa, Leda. Then came the connexion between human beings and 
animals, e.g. Alexander’s mother dreamt that she had copulated with a 
snake. Misgivings arose, since Pasiphae seems to have been a criminal 
in Greek, if not in Cretan eyes, and the Minotaur an abortion. A refine- 
ment is the story of Danaé, wherein Jupiter is a golden shower. 

3 Numa, 1V; cf. Reitzenstein, Poim., p. 229. 

* Antiq. XVIII. 3, 4, the historicity of which is disputed by Lafaye, 
Culte de Divinités, p. 54. 


9 


114 THREE STAGES OF A MYSTERY-RELIGION 


Secondly, such realistic union could not be tolerated by a 
maturer age. Men must stand on equality with women in 
the intimacy with deity, but the conception of synousia had 
become too venerable to be wholly discarded. The act was 
not repeated but exhibited in sacramental symbols and 
emblems in a form as far removed from the original theory 
as an observance of the Lord’s Supper is from the cult meal 
in which the mystae of Dionysus tore asunder and ate the 
raw flesh of the mystic bull. Phallic associations never 
became quite extinct in the Mysteries. We must not, 
however, receive the language of the Christian apologists 
too literally. Their horror of phallic survivals caused them 
to use language which must be discounted by their tendency 
to hark back? to customs and beliefs which were antiquated 
to all thinking pagans, and by their construing the ‘ spiritual 
marriage ’ as if the mystae had not outgrown the original 
stage. When all is said, enough remained of offensive 
symbolism to afford Christian controversialists cause for 
scorn * and even a pagan for his witticism.? On the other 
hand, the great Mystery-apologist, Iamblichus, defends the 
sacramental marriage at initiation as calculated to liberate 
men from evil passions. Lastly, the sacramental marriage 
became the profoundest symbol of the most intimate union 
known to religious experience. 

The Mysteries contributed largely to the conservation of 
the material which Christianity has recast. But in the 
Mysteries it was and remained more than a symbol: it was 
pre-eminently the sacrament of &wous, guaranteeing the 
communion which assured regeneration by imparting the 
divine nature. The terminology and usages of marriage 
were transferred to initiation. An ancient fresco has 
fortunately preserved scenes of preparation for initiation in 
the fashion of a bride.’ 

1 As Augustine charges his pagan contemporaries with believing primitive 
theology and rites which Varro had great trouble in rescuing from oblivion. 

* Cf. Clem. Alex. Proty. II.; Lactantius, Div. Inst. I. 17. 

* Lucian, Alex. 38 f. 


4 Harrison, Proleg. p. 533; Diels, Szb. Bl. p. 48. 
5 Macchioro, Zagreus, p. 69 f. 


SYMBOLA OF THE HIEROS GAMOS II5 


Several symbola of the holy marriage have survived. 
Firmicus! has related a Dionysiac symbolum, (i)3é vupd(i)e 
yaipe vuud(t)e, yatpe véov dws, in which the god is addressed at 
his epiphany, ‘ Hail, Bridal one; hail, new Light.’ * In the 
Sabazian initiations ‘the god in the bosom’ (6 dua KéArrov 
Geos) had a conspicuous réle thus described by Arnobius*: 
‘aureus coluber in sinum dimittitur consecratis et eximitur 
ab inferioribus partibus atque imis.’ To the Orphics who 
addressed their god as woxéAme the bridal idea was familiar, 
especially in the hieros gamos of Zeus and Hera,‘ and in 
the union of Dionysus and Ariadne.’ The confession on one 
of the tablets from Magna Graecia, deoroivas 8 td KodNrov 
éduv yOovias Bactrelas, has been interpreted of such a 
union.’ To the same effect is the Phrygian ‘I entered the 
chamber,’ which Clement characterizes as indecent. An 
inscription’ commemorates the dedication of a porticum et 
cubiculum to the Great Mother. The épyacdpevos* in the 
Eleusinian formula (‘I fasted,’ etc.) may be a euphemism 
for the ritual marriage. Pausanias ° testifies to the presence 
of a bridal chamber (wymphon) in the sanctuary of Demeter 
and Kore near Phlieus. Examples need not be multiplied. 

The conception was borrowed and further spiritualized 
by the Hermetic brethren and their kindred, the Gnostics. 
In the Hermetic prayer, ‘ Come to me, Lord Hermes, as babes 
to women’s wombs,’ !° mysticism seeks expression in words 


1 De Erv. Prof. Rel. XIX; Dieterich, pp. 122, 214. 

2 Also interpreted as an address to the newly initiated, the initiate, 
irrespective of sex, being bride to the bridegroom god (Anrich, p. 77). 

8 Adv. Nat. v. 21; cf. Clem. Alex. Protr. II. 16, Firm. Mat. xxvi. 

# Abel, 220; Proclus, In Tim.; Macchioro, Orf. e Paol. 224. 

5 Cf. Macchioro, Orf. e Paol. pp. 209-16. 

6 The meaning is rather ‘I entered the womb’ for rebirth. For other 
interpretations cf. Olivieri, p. 7, and scholiast on Plato, Gorgias, cited 
Farnell, Cults, III, p. 187, 

WC] een Nt O423. 

§ Retained by Foucart, Mystéres, p. 379, and Dieterich, p. 125, against 
Lobeck’s éyyevoduevos, p. 25, which Farnell (Cults, III, 185) supports, but 
which is as unnecessary as his change of moriturus to ovaturus in the Attis 
formula. oN LE E5435 

10 Which may admit of interpretation rather of rebirth; cf. Reitzenstein, 
Zwei Relig. Fragen, p. 20 ff. 


116 THREE STAGES OF A MYSTERY-RELIGION 


that have long since parted company with their original 
connotation. In Gnosticism the heavenly marriage was the 
favourite conception of bliss.1 One group, the Marcossians, 
‘prepare a bridal chamber and perform an initiatory rite 
for the mystae with certain formulae, and they term this 
a spiritual marriage.’* Another sect, the Valentinians, 
practise the rite of a spiritual marriage with angels* in 
a nuptial chamber, while another sect, the Naassenes, teach 
that the spirituals ‘must cast off their garments and all 
become brides pregnant by the Virgin Spirit.’‘ In the 
Hymn of the Soul the conception has been given its highest 
expression. It was also the Gnostics that brought into 
prominence the individual * soul rather than the group, as 
partner in this union. 

The idea of a mystic marriage, found in the earliest docu- 
ments of Christianity, was not implanted by the Mysteries. 
It is familiar in Jewish-Christian documents, as in those 
written in Gentile environment. The form, too, is different 
from the individualistic marriage in the Mysteries, since it 
was rather the society which was the Bride of Christ, a 
collective conception which was the direct heritage of 
Jewish thought in which Israel was the spouse, faithful or 
faithless, of Jahwe. But the Mysteries reacted upon the use 
of this common religious idea by exalting the individual as 
the bride of Christ beside the Church, the consummation 
of which is found in mediaeval and modern mysticism, and 
by intensifying the realism and concreteness of the idea. 
Thus the Church became not only the Bride but the Flesh of 
Christ, against whom the marriage of the individual was a 
breach of contract. How realistically this could be con- 
ceived is illustrated by Jerome,’ who, writing to Eusto- 


1 Liechtenhan, Offenbarung im Gnosticismus, p. 143. 

2 Tren. Adv. Haer. I. 21, 3. 

8 Bousset, Hauptprobleme, p. 315 ff.; Pauly-Wissowa, R.-Ency. VII, 
p. 1522. 

4 Hippolytus, Phzl. V. 8. 

5 Cf. Acta Thomae, 11 ff., Hennecke, N.T. Apokr. p. 484 ff. 

® Cf. Harnack, Lehre d. zwolf Apostel, p. 44 ff. (ref. from Dieterich) ; 
Dogmengesch. 4th ed., p. 27. 7 Ad Eustochium, XXII, 20. 


IN CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM II7 


chium’s mother on her daughter’s decision’ not to marry 
a soldier when she could marry the King himself, comforts 
her, ‘She has done you a great service: you have begun to 
be mother-in-law to God.’ In the early Church virgins were 
encouraged to dedicate their members and their flesh to 
Christ 1 (tam carne quam mente deo se vovere). Clement of 
Rome had already interpreted Gen. I. 27, as ‘ the male is 
Christ, the female the Church ’ and ‘ the flesh is the Church, 
the spirit Christ.’* Examples of the ardent noces spiri- 
tuelles in the experience of mystics could be multiplied, 
e.g. Saint Catharine’s betrothal to the infant Christ. A 
curious document of October 8, 1900, relative to the canoniza- 
tion of Crescentia Hoss reads: “‘ Jesus Christ, our Lord, has 
espoused the virgin Crescentia . . . by the giving of a ring 
in the presence of the most holy Mother, her guardian Angel 
presenting her to her Spouse.” * The language of the ancient 
Mysteries is not dead. One may recall how fervently 
Abelard urges upon the superior soul of Héloise that his 
place as husband has been vacated for her Lord. 

(ad) Sympathia with the Mystery-god. The bond of 
“Sympathy ’—in its literal sense—between the deity and 
the worshipper was a powerful attraction in the Mystery- 
Religions. In the sacrament the communicant witnessed 
and participated in the sorrows of his tutelar as a step 
to participation in the triumphant issues. The Oriental 
gods were not passionless and joyous abstractions or 
personifications: they were beings who suffered and re- 


joiced, struggled and conquered, died and rose again,‘ 


and in these aspects came nearer to the experiences of man. 
This fellowship in the deity’s sorrows as a means of ensuring 


1 Wilpert, Die gotigewethten Jungfrauen, p. 7; Heiler, Das Gebet, 3rd ed., 
p. 331 ff. 

aad Or, LL. 14, 2; 4, 

3 Dieterich, p. 132, who also cites the cases of Adelheid Langmann and 
Margaret Ebner. 

4 Cf. Baudissin, Adonis und Esmun; Macchioro, Zagreus, p. 120 fi. 
Ps.-Apuleius, 14, remarks, ‘uti Aegyptica numina ferme plangoribus, 
Graeca plerumque choreis.’ ‘Men are objects of concern to me, even in 
perishing ’ (Idiad, XX. 21), was not characteristic of the Apolline religion. 


= 


2 


118 THREE STAGES OF A MYSTERY-RELIGION 


the deity’s fellowship in man’s sorrows and of attaining 
apotheosis was a comparatively new idea in the West, 
which, once introduced, gained a powerful hold on the 
imagination. 

A great revolution had passed over the Mediterranean 
world in the conception of God. There spread a universal 
craving for a God of the heart to be approached with a 
warmth of affection and emotion. Larger scope was sought 
for the moral and spiritual life of man in the incessant world- 
struggle in which the deity was engaged. Only a god whose 
life could be the example and model for that of his worship- 
pers could suffice ; as a corollary the life of man was ideally 
a replica of that of his god. In the all-pervading sympathy 
which bound heaven and earth together man was linked with 
God. The Apolline religion of Beauty and Joy and the 
Roman religion of abstract Virtues were supplanted by a 
religion of Sorrow. That religious instinct was quickened 
which points to the only fulfilment of divine joy along the 
path of ‘ fellowship of sufferings.’ 

It was the preaching of Orphism which first popularized 
the idea that the repetition of the deity’s passion must 
precede fellowship in his resurrection, so that each reborn 
Orphic had passed through the fate of Zagreus. The 
Orphic dead is greeted, ‘ Hail, thou who hast suffered the 
passion ; hitherto thou hadst not suffered it. Thou didst 
become a god instead of mortal.’! Philosophic expression 
was given to Orphism by Heraclitus, who, in reference to the 
doctrine, speaks of ‘immortal mortals, mortal immortals, 
living his death, having died their life.’ * The frescoes of the 
Orphic chapel of the Villa Item reveal, in the terror of the 
initiand and in the flagellation, that such a repetition of the 
divine passion was not adumb-show. There too is displayed 
the looking-glass which, from its tragic association with the 
death of Zagreus, became to these mystics the symbol of 
divine passion, as the Cross to Christianity.*. An examination 


1 Olivieri, Lamellae orph., p. 16. 
* Diels, Fr. 62: cf. Macchioro, Eraciito, p. 88 ff. 
3 Macchioro, Zagreus, p. 105 ff.... 


SYMPATHIA WITH THE MYSTERY-GOD Ig 


of the rich symbolism of the underground basilica! outside 
the Porta Maggiore will deepen the impression that the 
Mysteries uttered no uncertain note as to the passion of the 
soul with saviour-gods on the path to apotheosis and throw 
light on the statement of Plutarch? that virtuous souls 
“returning as from exile to their homeland, taste a joy such 
as is experienced especially by initiands, mingled with 
alarm and terror together with a sweet hope,’ and on the 
well-known comparison * of the passion of the dying soul 
to the experiences of initiation. 

In the Greek rites of Eleusis the devotee contemplated 
and entered into the trials of Demeter in her sorrowful quest 
for the lost Persephone; but these Greek rites had been 
touched by Asiatic influences, inasmuch as the scene of 
Demeter’s sorrows is laid partly in Asia. In the Phrygian 
Mystery the sorrowful quest of the Great Mother for the 
unfaithful Attis was portrayed and found a response among 
the assistants.‘ On a certain night an image of the deity 
was laid upon a bed accompanied by an antiphonal lamenta- 
tion, after which the priest anointed the throats of all those 
who had joined in the wailing and lento murmure susurrat : 
‘Be of good cheer, ye mystae of the saved deity: to you 
too there will be salvation from your sorrow.’ In the 
Egyptian cult pre-eminently this religion of sorrow found 
its highest pagan expression: Isis was the mater dolorosa 
who sympathized with all the trials and afflictions of mortals. 
Reading Lucius’ sacramental prayer*®: ‘O thou holy and 
eternal Saviour of the human race . . . thou bestowest a 
mother’s tender affections on the misfortunes of unhappy 
mortals . . . thou dispellest the storms of life and stretchest 
forth thy right hand of salvation,’ we regret that Time has 
dealt so harshly with the Mystery liturgies. The Isiac 
communicant, after the period of grief, rejoiced with Isis in 

1 Cf. Mrs. Strong in J.H.S. XLIV, p. 65 f.; Cumont, Rev. Arch. ’18, pp. 

2-73-° 
: 2 cout in orbe lunae, 28, 943 C. 
3 Themistios (?), cf. Maas, Orpheus, 303 ff.; Stob. Flor. IV. 128; Mein, 


p. 107. 
4 Firm. Mat. De Err. Prof. Rel. 22. 5 Metam. XI. 25. 


1z0 THREE STAGES OF A MYSTERY-RELIGION 


the inventio Osiridis according to the symbolum ‘ we have 
found : we rejoice together.’! In Mithraism, the most virile 
of Oriental cults and therefore most attractive to the Ro- 
man soldiery, the conception of the sympathy of God and 
man was prominent. Men saw in the struggles of Mithra 
the Unconquered the prototype of their daily life. The 
tauroctonous Mediator,’ so familiar on the revolving slab in 
the chapels, the champion of Light against Darkness, of the 
weak against the strong, of men against the dominion of 
demons and cosmic powers, was a human figure whose 
triumphant struggle encouraged men to higher endeavour. 
Mithra, moreover, compensated for any apparent deficiency 
in sympathetic communion by alliance with other Eastern 
cults, particularly that of the Great Mother,’ and, in its 
latest stages, with that of the Egyptian mother of sorrows. 

Of course into this communion of Sympathy, as in every 
act of worship, the communicant entered only so far as his 
Spiritual capacities and achievement permitted. Probably 
only a small proportion of the initiates really comprehended 
the full spiritual meaning of the ceremonies and derived moral 
support therefrom. But who in any age may say what is 
the proportion of the Bacchi to the thyrsus-bearers? When, 
arising out of a sense of utter dependence on the help of the 
deity, there was a universal demand for spiritual support, 
for manifestation of the ‘ philanthropy’ of saviour-gods, 
we can understand the fascination which the Mysteries, as 
religions of suffering and struggle, exercised upon spiritual 
minds. In their weakness men and women—particularly 
women ‘—believed that the gods from the sunrise could really 
sympathize with their human lot, and in this faith were 
fortified for the business of life. Such were those to whom it 
was given to grasp the real meaning of the Mysteries.’ We 
shall see how Christianity was called upon to face the same 

1 Firm, Mat., 2b. 2; Augustine, De Civ. Dei, VI. ii. 

2 Plutarch, De Is. et Os. 46. 

> Cf. Cumont, Mystéres, 3rd ed. p. 189 ff. 

4 Cf. Boissier, Rel. rom. 7th ed. I. p. 359; Diog. Laert. Vita Pythag. 


VILivr, 107 Poucart,,Assoc. relig., p./61 i: 
5 Cf. spirituality of Plutarch, De Is. et Os. 3, 352 C. 


DIVINE SERVICES 121 


problem of human existence, and how it outstripped the 
Mysteries in reading “‘ the holy hieroglyph of pain.” 

(e) Divine Services. This communion of sympathy, 
effected at initiation, was renewed and fostered by divine 
services of a congregational as also of a private character. 
The weekly services in the Jewish synagogues and the 
festivals of the Jewish calendar were familiar to the Graeco- 
Roman world, as were also the regular meetings of the 
Christian ecclesiae. 

The public service of the Great Mother was usually re- 
served for special occasions such as the annual spring festival, 
or Megalensia, first officially recognized by Claudius, but 
the history of which stretches back to an early date, spring 
being the season which from time immemorial spoke of new 
life. The celebration opened on the Ides (15th) of March 
(a day marked in the calendar of Philocalus * as Canna tntrat) 
with a procession of the college of the Cannophori (Reed- 
bearers). A week later (22nd)—marked arbor intrat in the 
same calendar—the college of the Dendrophori (Tree-bearers) 
marched in solemn procession carrying the sacred pine 
wrapped in woollen fillets and decorated with fillets, com- 
memorating Attis’ act. The 23rd was probably,’ at least 
in later times, observed as the day of the Cleansing of the 
Trumpets. The 24th, the Dies sanguinis, was the high day 
of the festival, observed by strict fasting and lamentation 
and by participation in a sacrament during the night ; it 
was further marked by the self-flagellation and laceration 
of the frenzied Galli. This day of grief—the third after 
Attis’ death—was succeeded on the 25th by the Hilaria, or 
wild jubilation over the Resurrection of Attis. Such had 
been the emotional strain of these two days of tense grief 
and joy that the 26th was observed as a day of rest—the 
Requietio. The festival closed on the 27th with the Lavatio, 
or the bathing of the silver image of the Mother and the 
articles de culte in the Almo by the college of the Fifteen. 
Thereafter the sacred objects were conducted back to the 


1 Cf. Hepding, pp. 145-75; Aust, p. 155 f. 
* Hepding, p. 51. siay Aa Srey bu top 


122 THREE STAGES OF A MYSTERY-RELIGION 


temple by the priests, accompanied by a wildly jubilant 
carnival in which considerable licence was permitted, and 
during which the Galli took up the collection. 

The nature of the divine services and their frequency in 
Mithraism are very imperfectly known to us.1. We know of 
the existence of an ordo sacerdotum, but whether the 
sacerdotal succession could be strictly maintained in the 
Western countries as in the homelands of Mithraism is a 
moot question. The duty of such a clergy was to celebrate 
the daily offices,? maintain—at least in the Eastern chapels *— 
the perpetual holy altar fire, invoke the planet of the day, 
offer the frequent sacrifices for the adherents, and preside 
at initiations. The great festival of the Mithraic calendar 
was held on December 25, the Natalis Invicti, which in the 
lands of the Occident probably took the place of the Mith- 
vakana ‘inthe East. The first day of the week was dedicated 
to the Sun, to whom prayers were recited thrice daily, 
morning, noon, and evening.’ Special services were probably 
held on the Sunday. The sixteenth was kept holy to Mithra. 
“The small size of the Mithraea, and the scanty number of 
the members of the associations supporting each, make it 
extremely unlikely that there was anything like regular 
congregational worship, or that the faithful assembled there 
except for initiations or meetings for conferring the different 
degrees,’ says Legge.’ No doubt the soldiers with the 
colours, who formed the majority of the adherents, could 
not observe a regular attendance at fixed hours, nor could 
the slaves with their long and irregular hours of toil. But, 
despite difficulties, opportunities were found for worship, 
both fraternal and private devotion. The ‘ brothers’ met 
in the artificially lighted ‘Cave’ or ‘ Grotto,’ where they 


1 Cf. Cumont, T. et M. p. 313-30; Toutain, II, p. 132 ff. 

2 Ct Cumont, 20,1, p..324 f. 

® Cumont, 7b. ‘‘ No proof is forthcoming that a fire was kept perpetually 
burning on the altar in the European chapels of Mithras, as perhaps was 
the case with the temples of the faith in Asia Minor, or that daily or any 
other regularly repeated services were held there ’’ (Legge, II. p. 268). 

4 The Parsee Mithvagan ; cf. Cumont, ib. pp. 230, 325. 

5 Cumont, 1b. pp. 325, 342. SP Ls ipe26g; 


MITHRAIC ADORATION 123 


seated themselves on the stone benches running along both 
sides of the chapel! separated by a central aisle. The ser- 
vice consisted chiefly of the contemplation of the holy 
symbols, prayer (for which they knelt at the benches *), par- 
ticipation in the chanting of a litany to instrumental music, 
mostly flutes. Bells were sounded, perhaps mostly before 
the exposure of the Tauroctony. Sacrifices were offered, 
on great occasions a bull, on ordinary occasions birds. The 
two chief objects of adoration in these services—the one 
speaking of victory and the other of reconciliation—were 
the carved altarpiece representing the Tauroctony, or bull- 
slaying scene, and the other the carved plaque representing 
the sacred agape of Mithra and the Sun reconciled after 
their struggle. At these services candidates completed their 
catechumenate, and the tried ‘ soldiers ’ of Mithra joined in 
the sacrament of bread and water mixed with wine, which 
to Christians appeared a travesty of the Last Supper. 
In such a communion service the Mithraist believers were 
strengthened in their faith that Mithra would assure them 
victory here,’ and would come again from heaven to bring 
forth the dead from their graves for a judgment at which 
their Mediator would be the Advocate of the initiated soul, 
which, purified through his rites, would ascend through the 
seven planetary spheres to Paradise.‘ 

Concerning the public services of the Isiac Church we are 
better informed * by the narrative of Apuleius and the two 
frescoes from Herculaneum. Like the other deities, Isis 
too had her public festivals to cater for popular taste, of 
which the two chief were the Navigiwm Isidis, or Blessing of 
the Vessel of Isis, on March 5, and the Isia, Inventio Osiris, 

1 See photograph of the Mithraeum under church of St. Clement in 
Rome (Cumont, no. 63). 

2 So Cumont, I. p. 61, and Toutain, II, p. 135. Others believe that 
the initiates reclined on the benches in partaking of the agape. 

8 La religion mithraique fournissait 4 ses adeptes des réponses précises 
et consolantes aux plus graves questions que peuvent suggérer le spectacle 
de l’univers matériel, la conscience de l’activité morale, les incertitudes 
et les angoisses inspirées par la mort ”’ (Toutain, II, p. 132). 


4 Cumont, 7b. I. 309 f. 
5 Cf. also Porphyry, De Abst. 1V.9; Arnobius, VII. 32. 


124 THREE STAGES OF A MYSTERY-RELIGION 


or Passion and Resurrection of Osiris, celebrated from 
October 28 to November x. Of the first, the ‘ peculiar pro- 
cession of the saviour-goddess,’ a vivid account is given by 
Apuleius,! who witnessed it at Corinth. Women in white 
raiment led the procession, strewing the road from the city 
to the sea with flowers, followed by a crowd of men and 
women with torches and lanterns. Bands played instru- 
mental music. A ‘ beautiful hymn ’ was rendered by a special 
choir of youths, and the special flute-players of Serapis 
chanted the hymn usual in his temple. Then thronged the 
initiated, the women transparently veiled, the men tonsured. 
The priests closed the procession ; the first carrying a golden 
boat-shaped lamp, the second the altars of Succour, the third 
a golden palm and wand of Mercury, the fourth a left hand, 
emblem of Equity, and a golden vase, the fifth a winnowing- 
fan, the sixth an amphora; another personated Anubis, 
followed by a cow as emblem of fertility ; another carried 
the chest with the venerable mysteries ; another in his bosom 
the image of the Supreme Deity in the form of a curious 
urn with Egyptian hieroglyphs. On reaching the water the 
vessel of Isis was consecrated by the chief priest with solemn 
prayers, laden with offerings by the multitude, loosed from 
its moorings, and, with prayers inscribed on its sails, wafted 
out of sight by a breeze which seemingly arose of express 
purpose. Prayers being offered for the success of the year’s 
navigation, the holy things were borne in solemn procession 
back to the temple. 

The chief public festival of the Alexandrine cult was the 
Passion and Resurrection of Osiris,? ‘God of great Gods.’ ® 
The celebration began with a fast of ten days—a fact not 
to be overlooked in the psychopathy of the festival. Ina 
passion-play Isis sorrowfully sought the dismembered Osiris, 
a quest in which the priests and initiates joined with loud 
wailing. Finally, Isis’ grief is turned to joy by the Finding 


1 Metam. XI. 9-16; cf. Lafaye, Hist. du Culte, p. 126 ff.; Legge, 
Ip. 7 tf ill pesgo: 

* Cf. Minucius Felix, Octav. 21; Plutarch, De Is. et Osirv. 16 f. 30; 
Herod. III. 27-8. 3 Metam. XI. 30. 


MATINS AND VESPERS OF ISIS 125 


of Osiris, which the initiates exultantly celebrate with the 
cries, ‘ We have found him: we rejoice together,’ after which 
follow banquets in the temples and public games. ‘ Thus,’ 
says Minucius Felix, ‘ they never cease year by year to lose 
what they find and to find what they lose.’ 3 

It was not, however, these public festivals which lent 
such fascination to the Egyptian cult; it was rather its 
regular daily congregational services,’ of which there were 
two—bisque die *—Matins and Vespers: Matins, ‘the 
morning opening of the temple’ (templi matutinas aper- 
tiones),* at ‘the first hour,’ and Vespers ‘at the eighth 
hour,’ * or 2 o’clock in the afternoon, the chants of which 
were audible to passers-by. 

These services were performed by white-robed priests 
with tonsured heads, by whom they were made very 
impressive. Apuleius describes the morning service, which 
consisted of hymns, adoration, sacrifice and prayers, at which 
a liturgy was used. The worshippers are assembled before 
the door of the Isaeum awaiting the ‘ opening of the temple.’ 
At the hour a priest withdraws the white curtains that 
concealed the statue of Isis who in the glory of her rich robes 
was exposed for the adoration of the faithful as an Egyptian 
Madonna. A sacrifice—matutinum sacrificium—was then 
offered, during which the priest made the circuit of the 
altars reciting the morning litany and sprinkling before them 
the holy water from the sacred well within the temple 
precincts, and solemnly proclaiming the hour of prayer. 
The office concluded with the chanting of the morning hymn 
by the temple choir, in which probably the congregation 
participated antiphonally, and with a Mass or dismissal 
of the worshippers. 

The Vespers at two o’clock are not so fully known to us. 
There was a chant by the priests or temple-choir. As at the 
morning service the opening hour was announced, it is 
probable that a similar ceremony marked the closing of the 


1 Ib. 4 Metam. XI. 20. 
2 Cf. Lafaye, Hist. du Culte, p. 113 f. 5 Martial, X. 48, 1; II. 14, 8. 
Seo bullus, 13% 31. 


126 THREE STAGES OF A MYSTERY-RELIGION 


temple. As Isis was unveiled at the Matins it is likely that 
at the Vespers her statue was robed and withdrawn within 
the shrine, after her feet had been kissed by the most 
ardent devotees.} 

The fresco from Herculaneum in the Museum of Naples 
evidently portrays the morning service or rather portions 
of it. In a grove of trees a Serapeum stands in view— 
perhaps a copy of that of Alexandria *—to the porch of which 
a row of steps rises. At the top of the stairs before the 
portal stands the tonsured Alexandrian priest lifting in both 
hands breast-high an urn containing probably the holy 
Nile water. Behind him stand two figures—one shaking a 
sistrum and the other tonsured. At the foot of the stairs 
stands another priest with a sistrum in his left hand and 
some emblem of authority in his right, while on the stairs 
the initiates are ranged. Three altars appear in view, on the 
central one of which a sacrifice is smoking, attended by an 
acolyte. Ontheright is seated a flute-player evidently lead- 
ing the tune; on the left stand a man and woman shaking 
the sistrum, while on the right a priest with a wand acts 
evidently as choir-conductor to the chanting choirs. Lafaye $ 
has conjectured that this fresco scene depicts the adoration 
of the holy water, the representative symbol of Osiris 
as the giver of life and ‘Lord of Eternity.’ The other 
fresco,‘ also from Herculaneum, is equally noteworthy both 
in its similarities to and differences from the previous. In 
a sacred enclosure stands an open temple, flanked with Doric 
columns ornamented with garlands and reached by five 
steps. In the centre is a dark-bearded figure with head 
crowned with lotus and a chaplet, the one hand resting on 
his hip, the other raised in the air in the poise of a dance. 
Behind him stand two women, two children, and a shaven 
priest nude to the waist and in the act of shaking a sistrum. 
In the foreground at the foot of the steps there is seen 


1 Apuleius, Metam. XI. 17. 

2 Which was to the Isiac Church what the Temple at Jerusalem was to 
the Jewish Church. 

3 Hist. du Culte, etc. p. 115; Plut. De Is. et Os. XXXVI. 

4 Lafaye, pp. 115, 328; Legge, I, p. 68 f. 


SACRAMENTAL MEALS 127 


an altar smoking with sacrifice, at the base of which are two 
ibises ; on the right a priest with a musical instrument in 
each hand, a flute-player, a child, a kneeling man, a draped 
woman bearing a sistrum and a branch. On the left is a 
priest shaking a sistrum, an indistinct figure, a child with 
a basket and an urn, and, at the top of the steps, a kneeling 
woman supporting in her left hand a basket of fruits 
and holding a sistrum in her right. The whole scene is 
‘evidently one of great joy. Lafaye1 has conjectured 
that the swarthy figure personates Osiris, and that the 
scene is the closing pantomimic representation of the 
Passion of Osiris at the joyful moment of his resurrection 
before the jubilant spectators. If this conjecture is correct, 
the dramatic scene could not have formed part of the 
esoteric initiation, which would preclude it from being 
chosen as the subject of a fresco on which uninitiated eyes 
might gaze. 

(f) Sacramental Meals. Sacred meals played an impor- 
tant part in the Mysteries as sacraments of union. with 
the deity,? but the precise significance of these meals is 
disputed. Common meals of a religious character were 
in vogue in antiquity, such as the Greek ovooitia, and 
such meals were in some sense of a sacrificial character 
in forming part of a sacrifice or following a sacrifice. 
Guild meals were also a common feature of the ancient 
life, one particular class of which, that of the funerary 
guilds, appear frequently in Roman inscriptions. These 
guilds held commemorative banquets in honour of 
departed members of the household, at which the dead 
were regarded as present to participate in the feast and 
to whom offerings of food and drink were made. These 
meals furnished occasions of family reunions, at which, 
through religious ceremonies, the living maintained fellow- 
ship with the dead and satisfied that craving so deep-seated 
in the Roman heart and so clamant on Roman sepulchral 
stones for an immortality of remembrance. 


1 Hist. du Culte, pp. 115-16. 
2 Cf. Clemen, Prim. Christianity, p. 260. 


128 THREE STAGES OF A MYSTERY-RELIGION 


We have abundant evidence that in the cult meals of the 
/Graeco-Roman age the deity was viewed sometimes as 
/ guest and sometimes as host, or indefinitely as both guest 
' and host, as in the religious conception, ‘ I will come in and 
sup with him, and he with Me.’ As instances of the deity 
as host, we may cite the dinner-invitation of a second-century 
papyrus,? ‘ Chaeremon invites you to dine at the table of the 
Lord Serapis, to-morrow, 15th, at nine o’clock,’ and a similar 
one from the same century :* ‘ Antonius, Ptolemaeus’ son, 
invites you to dine with him at the table of the Lord Serapis, 
in the Serapeum of Claudius, on the 16th at nine o’clock.’ 
An inscription from Kos * has preserved an interesting ritual 
for the entertainment of Hercules, in which occurs the 
expression ‘the table of the God’ (rp7éfav tiv tod Oeod). 
Aristides tells how the worshippers of Serapis partake in the 
full communion with him by ‘ inviting him to the hearth as 
guest and host.’* Paulina was lured to a Serapeum on an 


“invitation to sup with Anubis. In Paul’s expression, ‘ the 


cup of demons,’ ‘ the table of demons,’ there is implied the 
same view of divine hospitality. 

There is also evidence that the deity was viewed as guest. 
Rohde * gives examples from Greek inscriptions in which the 
formula xdAiwnv otpacat, ‘spread the table for,’ is found 
in connexion with several deities, Pluto, Aesculapius, and 
Attis. The Roman Jovis Epulum became, at least in the 
closing republic, a banquet at which the worshippers served 
the god with food and invited the Capitoline Trinity to 
partake thereof. Valerius Maximus expressly states: 
‘At the banquet of Jupiter he himself was invited to the 
table, and Juno and Minerva were invited to dine.’’ The 
lectisternia and later sellisternia for female deities were 
examples of entertainment of the celestials. 

In nearly all the Mysteries an agape, or sacramental meal, 

1 Oxyrhy. Pap. I. 110. ahd Us pol 1G De dey 

3 Dittenberger, Sylloge, 3rd ed. no. 1106, 1. 100; Paton and Hicks, 
Inscr. of Cos. 36; Prott-Ziehen, 144. 

4 dacruudva atrov Kal éoridropa, 97 (Dind. I, p. 94). 


S Psyche, 1. 130, 
6 Cf. Wissowa, p. 357. 7 II. 1, 7 (cited in Rohde). 


DEITY AND WORSHIPPER COMMENSALS _ 129 


preceded initiation. At Eleusis the sacrifice to Demeter 
and Kore was followed by a banquet on the flesh of the 
victims. Tertullian! records a coquorum delectus at the 
Dionysiac Apaturia and Attic Mysteries. In the Mysteries 
of Mithra ‘ bread and a cup of water are offered in the rites 
of initiation accompanied by certain explanations,’ * to which 
Pliny * refers in magicis cenis tnitiaverat. Extant symbola 
attest the sacramental meal in the cult of the Great Mother. 
The inscription of Andania and one from Messenia ‘ prove 
the same for Demeter, while for the Samothracian Mysteries 
an inscription from Tomi*® relates that the priest ‘ shall 
break and offer the food and pour out the cup to the mystae.’ 
In the remains of ancient sculpture and painting are 
preserved such scenes, of which a striking example is that of 
the Villa Item.* 

But in what sense did the participant of the sacramental 
meal become xowwvis of the god? Was he conceived as 
feeding on the god by eating his totem or sacrifice, that is, 
by the entry of the deity into the believer in a magical 
fashion ? That there was a firm belief, in the earlier stages 
of religion, of such participation in the god by eating him in 
a sacramental meal cannot be questioned. In the Thracian- 
Dionysiac Mysteries, e.g., the celebrants by such a meal 
obtain a share in the divine life of the god, and so are called 
by his name, Saboi, Sabazioi.". Andin the Dionysus-Zagreus 
cult the communicants rushed madly upon the sacrificial 
animal, tore it to pieces and ate it raw, believing that the 
god was resident in the offering.’ Cumont believes that the 
original significance of the eating of a sacred animal in the 
Phrygian cults was that ‘“‘it was believed that thus there 
took place an identification with the god himself, together 
with a participation in his substance and qualities,” and 
that in certain mystic meals of the Syrian cult the priests 

1 Apol. 39. 3 XXX. 1, 6. 

* Justin, Apol. 166. 4) S055 "pi 50: 

5 Arch. epig. aus Ost. VII. ’82, p. 8; Prott-Ziehen, 84; Michel, 704. 

® Photo by De Petra in Not. d. Scavi, ’10. 

* Cf, Rohde, II, p.14. 

§ Religions orientales, 2nd ed. pp. 104, 174. 

10 


FOO CTP aera 


130 THREE STAGES OF A MYSTERY-RELIGION 
and the initiates, by eating the fish sacred to Atargatis, 


considered themselves to be devouring the life of the deity. 
But Dieterich,1 Lietzmann,? and Heitmiiller * admit that the 


examples are scanty, though they incline to believe that this 


crude conception was not extinct in the days of St. Paul 
‘when the Mysteries were enjoying a career of success. On 
the other hand, it is affirmed by Gardner,‘ “In his [Paul’s] 


time we cannot trace in any of the more respectable forms 


\\ of heathen religion a survival of the practice of eating the 
deity, 


3 


with which Kennedy * agrees while affirming “ at 
least as probable an explanation is the notion that the god 
himself is present and shares with his worshippers in the 
sacrificial meal’; that is, deity and worshippers are 
commensals. 

The evidence for the persistence of such a crude semi- 
physical idea of communion in the later stages of the 
Mysteries is too scanty to permit us to see in the sacramental 
meals of these cults the means whereby the communicant 
sought union with the god by partaking of him or feeding 
upon him. The chief evidence on which a magical view of 
fellowship is based are some mystic formulae preserved by 
Clement of Alexandria, Minucius Felix, and Arnobius. 
According to Clement the following confession was repeated 
by the Eleusinian communicant after the sacred meal: 
‘I fasted, I drank the cykeon, I took out of the chest ; having 
done the act I put again into the basket, and from the 
basket again into the chest,’ * words which appear in Arno- 
bius as ‘ieiunavi atque ebibi cyceonem: ex cista sumpsi 
et in calathum misi; accepi rursus, in cistulam transtuli.’ ’ 
Clement likewise gives the symbolum of the Attis-mystes as 
‘I ate out of the tympanum ; I drank out of cymbalum ; I 
carried the xepyds; I entered the chamber.’* These 

1 Mithrasht. 2nd ed. p. 105. 

® Handb. Z.N.T. Il. 1, p. 125. 

3 Taufe u. Abendmahi, p. 40 ff. 

4 St. Paul, p. 121; cf. Morgan, Relig. and Theology of Paul, p. 214. 
5 St. Paul, pp. 256-9. 


Protrep II. 21. 7 Adv. Nat. V. 26. 
* 7b. Il. 15: cf. Firm. Mat., De Err. Prof. Rel. XVIII. 


RITUAL ACT AND SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE 131 


sacramental confessions are clearly not determinative. 
Besides, it is a well-known fact that in all religions rites 
become stereotyped and formulae remain unchanged while 
the interpretations and the symbolism are constantly ex- 
panding in spirituality—a phenomenon of which we have 
met numerous examples. 4 

These sacramental meals, therefore, were not sacramental 
in the primitive magicalsense. They rather signalized the 
reception of the neophyte communicant as a member of the 
religious guild or Mystery-church, and served as a token of 5 
the communion of the Mystery-saints, forming the main bond? ‘, 
of brotherhood among the cult members. They were also 
in some way not merely the symbol but the outward means 
or sacrament of union with the patron god. They secured 
communion between the mystae of the same god * and mag- 
nified by an obvious symbolism the faith of the communicant 
in the Divine as the source of spiritual nourishment ‘ for 
the tasks of his daily life. Through these sacraments 
men caught glimpses and premonitions as through a glass 
darkly of the light of God. Doubtless the degrees of 
spirituality and vision were as varied among these ancient 
worshippers as among those who in Christendom approach 
the table of the Lord. . 

The ancient communicant, whether pagan or Christian, did 
not enquire profoundly into the theological question of the 
nexus between the magical-ritual sacramental act and the 
spiritual experience.’ There was, therefore, as wide scope for 
variety in the theology of the Mystery-sacraments as exists 


1 Cf. collegae et consacranet, C.I.L. III. 2105; and fratres carissimos 
of Jupiter Dolichenus, C.J.L. VI. 406. 

* Cf. Clemen, Primitive Christianity, p. 260. 

3’ “ The frequent observance of sacred meals maintained the communion 
among the mystae of Cybele, Mithras, or the Baals’’ (Cumont, Relig. 
ortent., p. 64, Engl. tr. p. 41). 

4 “ Towards the close of the empire moral ideas were particularly asso- 
ciated with the assimilation of the liquids or sacred foods from the tam- 
bourine or cymbal of Attis. These became the nourishment of the spiritual 
life, and were considered as sustaining the initiate in the trials of his life’’ 
(Cumont, p. 104; Engl. tr. 69; cf. also p. 224). 

5 Cf. Holtzmann, N.T. Theologie, II, p. 196. 


132 THREE STAGES OF A MYSTERY-RELIGION 


about the central rite of our worship. The How in sacra- 
mental operation was never answered, consequently the 
nature of the fellowship was very vague, the same cult act 
producing different emotions in different people and 
suggesting various modes of interpretation. Perhaps some 
celebrants retained antiquated notions of semi-physical 
fellowship, though this is doubtful in the later Mysteries. 
At the other extreme were those who found in the fellowship 
a spiritual experience. But the fellowship was generally 
not viewed either so literally or so purely spiritually. The 
average communicant believed that in some realistic, hyper- 
physical sense the sacrament was an occasion on which or 
means by which he was privileged to enter into fellowship 
with the divine life, by which he was reborn or endowed with 
immortality. What mystical ex opere operato virtue may 
have lain therein escaped his attention or concern. In a 
world where it was possible for an educated Christian man 
like the author of the Clementine Homilies to assert that ‘ evil 
spirits gain power by means of the food consecrated to them, 
and are introduced by your own hands into your own bodies ; 
there they hide themselves for a long time and unite with the 
soul,’1 or where a respectable Church father could view the 
Eucharist as ‘the medicine of immortality, an antidote 
against death, and a means of everlasting life in Jesus 
Christ,’* we must hesitate to ascribe a highly spiritual or 
symbolic efficacy to the Mystery-sacraments.* Further, 
pagans and Christians alike observed no strict boundary- 
lines between the physical and hyper-physical, between 
the symbol and the resultant or concomitant experience. 
Neither their science nor their philosophy necessitated 

1 TIX. 9: 

2 Ignat. Eph. XX. Cyril of Jerusalem speaks of ‘ partaking of the body 
and blood of Christ, that you may become con-corporate and con-sanguineous 
(ctcowpnos Kal ctvaiuos a’rov) with Him ; for thus we become Christophori, 
his body and his blood entering into our members ’ (Dieterich, p. 107). 

’ Excluding those two great Spirituals Paul (of whom Morgan has well 
said, ‘‘ Of the sacraments he might have said what he said of circumcision, 
that neither their observance not their non-observance avails anything,” 


p. 227), and the writer of the ‘ spiritual gospel,’ who affirms in a communion 
address: ‘ the flesh profiteth nothing ; it is the Spirit which quickens.’ 


SILENT ADORATION 133 


a strict delimitation. Examples lie to hand in the gospel 
narratives of the Resurrection and in Paul’s doctrine of the 
pneumatic body and of that metamorphosis which Christians 
through the possession of the Spirit of Christ are undergoing 
from glory to glory in conformation to the image of God’s 
Son. The Christian church of Corinth saw no difference in 
kind between the Lord’s table and the table of the neigh- 
bouring heathen temple. Such considerations point to the 
conclusion that the Mystery-sacraments were conceived 
with a large amount of realism, but a realism through the 
denseness of which the light of riper spiritual experience 
continued to break, and by which men learned that the 
things that are seen are temporal, but the things that are 
unseen eternal. In those pagan sacraments, as in the whole 
course of religious history, man’s spirit marched painfully 
from sacramentarianism through symbolism to that goal to 
which the external symbol pointed in the truth of God. 

(g) Contemplative Adoration, or Meditation, represents 
the more private and personal aspects of communion in the 
Mysteries, and was practised as a means of &wous, or 
identification. In the cult of the Egyptian deities silent 
prayer and contemplation played an important part both 
before and subsequent to initiation. So characteristic was 
this attitude of Egyptian worship that a Roman writer 
speaks of the Egyptians as ‘a people always seated in their 
temples,’ and Porphyry ?® states that the Egyptian priests 
devoted their whole lives ‘ to the contemplation and adora- 
tion of the deity.’ There are frequent literary references to 
the seats found in the Egyptian temples of the Roman 
world. In the Isaeum of Pompeii, built about 150 B.c., 
there has been discovered a bench evidently designed from 
its position for such worship.* The Serapea probably stood 
open between Matins and Vespers, like Catholic churches of 
the present day, to receive those who desired to ease their 
conscience or secure that quiet of heart that comes to many 


1 Julius Florus, Epitomae, cited by Lafaye, p. 119. 
2 De Abst. 1V. 6: 7H r&v Ocdv Gewpia Kx. Oeacet. 
3 Described in Mau, Pompeii, p. 171 ff. 


134 THREE STAGES OF A MYSTERY-RELIGION 


in a holy place. Apuleius describes his boundless delight 
(gratissimum miht) and ‘unspeakable pleasure’ (imexplica- 
bili voluptate) in such prolonged contemplation before 
the statue of the deity as an act of piety and stage in 
preparation for initiation.1 Some worshippers hired a 
compartment within the temple in order to indulge uninter- 
ruptedly in devotion during the day, and, by means of 
incubation, to be vouchafed a vision or optical revelation of 
the deity during the darkness. Such was Apuleius, who 
testifies: ‘There was never one night nor a sleep unvisited 
by a vision or admonition of the goddess, but by her 
repeated holy commands she decreed that I should at length 
be initiated into the holy rites for which I had long since 
been set apart.’ Arrangements for prolonged meditation 
or incubation could be made through the priesthood for 
members of either sex. Juvenal speaks of the wife devoted 
to Oriental rites cum qua di nocte loguantur,? and Josephus 
has recorded the notable case of Paulina. Propertius’ 
Cynthia had spent ten nights of the holy season in vigil 
before the altar of Isis,s where Corinna also evidently spent 
the hours of the day frequently.‘ Others—without doubt 
the majority—were more sporadic in their practice of 
contemplative devotion. 

Some peculiar atoning efficacy in wiping out the stains of 
the past was attributed to such silent musing, as we learn 
from Ovid.’ This silent worship seems to have appealed 
most to women, with their more aesthetic sensitiveness, as 
it does to-day in Catholicism, and in some non-Roman 
churches. With what different eyes was the Egyptian Ma- 
donna gazed upon! In that silent devotion the none too 
scrupulous amatae of the Roman poets met their sisters of 
higher rank and purer morals. 

Reference has been made to the two main awe-inspiring 
objects of contemplation in the Mithraic chapels, the 
Tauroctony and the agape of reconciliation. There were 


' Metam. XI. 17, 19, 24. 2iViEe §3%3 S717 33,52 
4 Ovid, Amores, II. 13,7; cf. XIV, Tibullus, I. 3 
5 Ep. Ponto, I. 1, 5t-2. 


EPOPTEIA—EPIPHANY 135 


also symbolic objects representative of the elemental forces 
of nature which affect man’s life, the alternation of light and 
darkness, the decay of winter and rebirth of spring, and such 
things as made the mystery of the universe less perplexing 
to the Roman legionary and exiled slave. 


III. EporpteIA OF THE MysTERY-GOD AND BLESSEDNESS 


1. The immediate result of initiation was to behold an 
epiphany of the deity. It was an act of faith that the 
deity was present to grant a theophany,’ and great import- 
ance was attached to the vision. The ancient mind, pagan 
and Christian, was predisposed to such visions, whether 
vouchsafed in dreams, trances, ecstasy, or hypnotic con- 
ditions. As examples may be cited the Christophany to 
Paul on the road to Damascus, the Apocalypse, the Apoca- 
lypse of Peter, or the dream of the Pamphylian Er,* to whom 
was revealed in ecstasy the fate of the wicked and the destiny 
of souls, or that of Thespesius.‘ Aristides records an 
experience in which ‘ there came from Isis a Light and other 
unutterable things conducing to salvation. In the same 
night appeared Serapis and Aesculapius himself, both 


1 Lafaye has well described the power of the Egyptian priesthood in its 
appeal to the emotional life: ‘“‘ When the ceremonies of the daily office, 
the adoration of the holy objects, the representation of the mysteries no 
longer sufficed, the devotee might still remain there, silent and impassible, 
his eyes wandering vacantly, his spirit enraptured with calm and profound 
reveries. In order to remove the harsh feeling of exterior reality and to 
detach him from the life of the world a means was discovered in inviting 
him to sit before the idol’ (p. 119). Dill has equally well described 
the effect of contemplation in the Mithraic chapel: ‘‘ Before him was 
the sacred group of the Tauroctonus, full of somany meanings to many 
lands and ages, but which to his eyes probably shed the light of victory 
over the perilous combats of time, and gave assurance of a larger hope. 
Suddenly, by the touch of an unseen hand, the plaque revolved, and he had 
before him the solemn agape of the two deities in which they celebrated the 
peaceful close of their mystic conflict. And he went away, assured that his 
hero-god was now enthroned on high, and watching over his faithful 
soldiers on earth”’ (p. 608). 

2 Cf. Aristophanes, Clouds, 262 ff. 

3 Plato, Repub. X. 13 f., 614. 

4 Plutarch, De sera num. vind. 22. 


136 THREE STAGES OF A MYSTERY-RELIGION 


marvellous in beauty and stature and in certain aspects 
resembling each other.’1 All ancient epiphaneiae were 
of the character of a dazzling light. Porphyry knows that 
‘the eye of the body cannot bear ’ the brightness of divine 
apparitions.’ 

The experience of Apuleius, ‘I saw the sun shining at 
midnight,’ and ‘adoravi de proxumo,’ refers to such an 
epiphany. In the Attis cult ‘Hail, Bridegroom, Hail, new 
Light ’announced the epiphany. Inthe Liturgy of Mithra* 
we read, ‘ Thou shalt see a youthful god, lovely in form, 
with red locks, wearing a white tunic and scarlet mantle, 
and holding a bright crown.’ In the fragment of Themistius 
the soul in death ‘as in the great Mysteries,’ after fear and 
shuddering, ‘is confronted by as it were a marvellous light.’ 
The most explicit testimony is given by Proclus‘: ‘ In all 
these [initiations and Mysteries] the gods reveal many forms 
of themselves, and manifest themselves changing their modes 
of apparition. There issues from them a light, sometimes 
formless, sometimes in human shape, and again transmuted 
into other shapes.’ 

In the tense emotional exaltation of initiation the ancients 
believed it possible to see God. This was not viewed as a 
condescension of the deity to earth but as the ascension of 
man through death and the elements to heaven, for ‘ none 
of the heavenly gods will leave the bounds of heaven and 
descend on earth, but man ascends to heaven.’*® Of the 
nature of these visions there is the same uncertainty as 
about all religious visions. But the collection and sifting ° 
of visionary phenomena has lessened the distance between 
Proclus and ourselves, so that the experiences of the Mysteries 
no longer sound incredible. The initiand was predisposed 
by fasting, the suggestions and promptings of the priest, the 
awful reverence of the sacramental drama, the contagion 

1 Ovat. Sac. III (Dind. I), p. 500. 

De Mystertis, Il. 8 (Parthey, p. 86), III. 2, p. 104. 
Dieterich, p. 10, 1. 27. 


2 
3 
4 In Plat. Remp.I, p. 110; Kroll; cf. De Jong, p. 379 ff. 
5 Corp. Herm. X. 25. 

6 


Cf, Delacroix, Etude d’hist. et de Psychologie du mysticisme, Paris ’08, 


BLESSEDNESS AND SALVATION 137 


of collective emotion,the magical effect attached by antiquity 
to the repetition of cult formulae, the hallucinatory con- 
templation of the sacra, or by enkoimesis to behold what he 
expected. How suggestion could operate is patent in the 
paintings of the Villa of the Mysteries. To aver that the 
phenomena were in every case genuine, induced by natural 
psychopathic means, would demand too much of priestcraft. 
It is possible that hierophants had ways of assisting or 
imposing upon the imagination of unpromising candidates, 
so that robed acolytes or statues sometimes did duty for deity. 
As in every religion, such cases would be the counterfeits 
of the genuine. That initiands were not equally susceptible 
to the vision seems to be suggested by the distinction made 
by Psellus ! between autopsia, whereby the initiand himself 
beholds the divine light, and epoptera, in which he beholds 
it through the eyes of the hierophant. But the testimony 
of the initiated, the corroboration of such experiences in 
other religions, and the salutary effect attached to the vision, 
prove its reality in general. 


Blessedness and Salvation in General 


2. To the question why did such multitudes, especially in 
the first Christian centuries, rush eagerly into the Mystery- 
communities, which were at first despised dissenters, some- 
times bitterly persecuted, maintained by the offerings 
of the faithful, when a state church, with the prestige of 
“establishment” behind it, offered them an inexpensive 
religion, the answer will in the main be found in what the 
Mysteries promised. All the Mystery-gods were primarily 
saviour-gods. To initiation was ascribed a sacramental 
efficacy which atoned for a man’s past, gave him comfort 
in the present, a participation in the divine life, and assured 
to faith an hereafter of such dazzling splendour that the trials 
and conflicts of this earthly existence were dwarfed into 
insignificance. The Mysteries held out to men the salvation 


1 Exp. ovac, chal, (Migne), p. 1135. 


138 THREE STAGES OF A MYSTERY-RELIGION 


which was so eagerly and pathetically sought! by those 
intensely religious centuries—salvation as it was then under- 
stood in its various aspects, more religious than ethical, 
physical and spiritual. ‘“‘ The deity of the society was a 
Oeds cwtnp, and the society sought through fellowship 
with him to reach a state of cwrnpia, safety or salvation, 
a salvation belonging alike to the present life and that beyond 
the grave. . . . It was the deities of the Mysteries who were 
in an emphatic sense the saviours of those who trusted in 
them, and they saved by allowing the votary to have a share 
in their lives.” The other traditional or still surviving deities 
might afford a specific or partial salvation, e.g. the ‘ greatest 
lover of men,’ Aesculapius, or the ‘ Gods manifest’ of the 
imperial cult, but the Mystery-gods offered what the heart 
of the ancient worshipper yearned for. It is another matter 
whether they promised more than they could fulfil ; but they 
did promise generously, and many of the believing worship- 
pers were persuaded that the promises of the Mystery-god 
were not like those of Mephistopheles to Faust. The 
‘regenerated’ initiate believed that his God put a new 
song in his mouth, and that he could go on his way 
rejoicing through life. Such at least is their surviving 
testimony. The salvation imparted in the Mysteries em- 
braced deliverance from the physical ills of life, from bodily 
ailments, from the sense of alienation, from the galling power 
of Fate, and the reckless caprice of Fortune, from the 
ubiquitous terrors of the demons, from the fears of super- 
stition, and lastly from the gloom of death. No other 
forms of pagan religion could enter into successful 
competition with the Mysteries in such a comprehensive 
evangel. 


1 “In der Zeit, wo das Christentum auftrat, erlebten die alten griech- 
ischen Mysterien eine Art von Renaissance, Das wundersame tiefe 
Sehnen jener Zeit nach einem ‘ Heile,’ einem heilenden, rettenden Gotte, 
nach einer owrnpia, einem cwrip, dem jene Mysterien entgegenkamen, - 
schuf ihnen neues Interesses,’’ F. Kattenbusch, Sakvament, in Herzog- 
Hauck, Real-Encyc. 3rd ed. XVII, p. 351. Cf. Gardner, in Hastings’ 
E.R.E. 1X, p. 81 b. 

* Gardner, Relig. Exper. of St. Paul, pp. 82-4. 


IMMORTALITY 139 
Specifically, Immortality 


3. Multitudes, never touched by the reasonings of Platonism 
for the immortality of the soul, found in life a new value as 
a probation for a blessed hereafter. ‘ As truly as Osiris 
lives, so truly shall his followers live; as truly as Osiris is 
not dead he shall die no more; as truly as Osiris is not 
annihilated he shall not be annihilated,’ says an Egyptian 
text.1 This immortality was acquired by assimilation with 
Osiris-Serapis, or by becoming Osiris and receiving the new 
name of ‘ Osiris.’ The member of the Isiac church could 
carve on the tomb of his departed ‘ brother’ evypdye pera 
tov ‘Oceipioos.2 ‘May Osiris give thee the water of 
refreshment,’ ‘ ‘ May Isis bestow on thee the holy water of 
Osiris’* are also found. Egypt, that had for millennia 
brooded upon the mystery of death, offered in Isis and 
Serapis life and immortality to the dwellers in the Roman 
Empire. Conspicuous among the symbols of the Isiac faith 
appears the lotus, emblem of immortality, out of the calyx 
of which comes forth the youthful god Harpocrates, who had 
overcome death. Isis, the “eternal saviour of the race of 
men,’ promises her votary: ‘Thou shalt live in blessedness ; 
thou shalt live glorious under my protection. And when thou 
hast finished thy life-course and goest down to the under- 
world, even there in that lower world thou shalt see* me 
shedding light in the gloom of Acheron and reigning in the 
inmost regions of Styx: thou thyself shalt inhabit the Ely- 
sian fields and shalt continually offer worship to me, ever 
gracious.’ ” 

Initiation made all the difference between the saved and 
the unsaved of the ancient worshippers. In the Hymn to 


1 Cf. Cumont, Rel. orient. 2nd ed. p. 149. 

2 Cf. Reitzenstein, Poim. p. 369, who cites a text in which the dead says : 
‘‘je deviens nouveau, je deviens jeune, je suis Osiris.’ Cf. also Wiede- 
mann, Relig. dey alten Agyptern, p. 128 f. 

3 Insc. Graecae, XIV. 2098. 

4 Rev. des Et. grecques, 96, p. 435; C.I.G. 6562. 

Sietenicn, “Pp. 250. 

5 Reading videbis for Helm’s vides. 

7 Apul. Metam. XI. 6. 


140 THREE STAGES OF A MYSTERY-RELIGION 


Demeter the Goddess-mother asserts: ‘ Happy is he of men 
on earth who has seen those Mysteries ; but the uninitiate, 
who has no part in these holy things, cannot, when dead 
and down in the murky gloom, have like portion of such 
blessings.’ The uninitiate not only die without hope? 
but have apportioned them all ills by the chthonic powers.’ 
Whereas an Eleusinian hierophant, Glaucus, can triumphant- 
ly declare: ‘ Beautiful indeed is the Mystery given us by 
the blessed gods: death is for mortals no longer an evil, 
but a blessing.’ ‘ Of the same rites the scholiast on Aristo- 
phanes (Frogs, 158) asserts: ‘It was the common belief 
in Athens that whoever had been taught the Mysteries would, 
when he died, be deemed worthy of divine glory. Hence all 
were eager for initiation.’ Another scholiast * records, ‘ The 
Greeks told how those who had been initiated into the 
Mysteries found Persephone benign and gracious in Hades.’ 

The cruder rites of Phrygia also met in their sacraments 
the demand for immortality.’ Attis, in his death and 
resurrection, became the prototype of the Cybele-votary 
triumphing over death.’ Attis also played the part to the 
dying that the ‘Saviour and psychopomp’ Serapis* did 
to the faithful of the Isiac church. The priests of the 
Syrian religion likewise promised the believer a share in the 
life of the deathless gods and the ascent of his soul to its 
place among the sidereal gods in the realm of light. Many 
a legionary from the bleak hills of Caledonia to the burning 

1 Lines 480-2. 

* Cf. Cicero, De Legg. II. 14, 36: ‘ Nihil melius illis Mysteriis quibus ex 
agresti immanique vita exculti ad humanitatem et mitigati sumus, 
initiaque, ut appellantur, ita re vera principia vitae cognovimus, neque solum 
cum laetitia vivendi rationem accepimus, sed etiam cum spe meliore 
moriendi.’ 

3 Sophocles, Frag. 719 (Dind., 348 Didot). In another fragment (Nauck 
753) death is, for the initiated, life. 

* Inscription found at Eleusis, published in “Epnu. dpx., 83, p. 82, 
thus: fe Kaddv éx paxdpwr pvotipiov, od udvov eivar Tov Odvarov Ovyrois od} KaKdv 
arn’ ayador. 

5 On Aristides, Dindorf, III, p. 314. 

®§ Cumont, Rel. orient. 2nd ed., p. 89. 

? Cf. Frazer, Adonts, Aittis, Osiris, I, p. 272. 

® Aristides, Ov. sacrae, VIII. 54 (Dind. I. 93). 


COMFORT IN LIFE I4I 


sands of Mesopotamia was sustained in his last hours by the 
conviction of a deathless life which he had learned in the 
Mithraic chapel. The emperor Julian closes his satire, 
The Caesars, with the following confession of his own faith : 
‘ As for thee, I have given thee to come to the knowledge of 
thy father, Mithra. Keep thou his commandments, and so 
procure for thyself during life a cable and sure anchorage ; 
and when it is necessary for thee to depart hence, thou shalt 
go with a good hope, having rendered thy tutelar god 
gracious to thee.’1 Orphism continued its stern preaching 
that man is a fallen being who can escape eternal punishment 
only by initiation into the Orphic life, a strain which entered 
into every form of Mystery-religion. The religion of Thrice 
Greatest Hermes held out deification as the ultimate goal 
to the true Gnostic. 

A few hours spent upon the marvellous symbolism of the 
underground basilica on the Via Praenestina or upon the 
beautiful frescoes of the Villa Item will give some idea of the 
sense of joy and victory experienced by the ancient initiate 
in his chapel. On entering the former one is impressed by 
the other-worldly character of the imagery and by the 
spirit of hope. The numerous winged Victories proclaim 
the initiate’s triumph over death. Mythological scenes— 
the rape of Ganymede, of a Leucippid, the liberation of 
Hesione by Hercules, Orpheus and Eurydice—symbolize the 
rape of the soul or the attainment of apotheosis. The 
palaestra scenes, with the crowns and fillets and palms for 
the victors, confirm the faith of the initiate. Memorable is 
the stucco of the apse? representing a scene of apotheosis 
by water. Into a stormy sea beating between two rocky 
promontories an Eros (Love) gently assists a veiled figure 
(the soul, or the initiate herself) holding a lyre (signifying 
salvation and participation in the Choir of the Blessed), 
while underneath a Triton is waiting to receive her in a boat- 
shaped veil or sheet, and another is blowing his horn. On 
a third promontory Apollo, the God of Light, is holding out 
his hand graciously to receive the soul after passing through 

1 336, C. 2 E. Strong and N. Jolliffe, 7.H.S. XLIV, p. 103 f. 


142 THREE STAGES OF A MYSTERY-RELIGION 


the last ordeal, and a Victory is proferring the crown. Love, 
Light, and Grace were the portion of the purified soul in the 
Isles of the Blessed, as contrasted with the deep dejection 
of the pensive male figure on the left of the scene, typifying 
the uninitiated to whom blessedness is denied. In the 
recently discovered ! Mithraeum of Capua a white marble 
plaque, carved in beautiful relief, represents Eros holding 
Psyche by the left hand while encouraging her by gentle 
entreaty. 

The task of the ancient Mysteries would seem to have been 
the education of men in the doctrine of a future life—no 
mean service to the ancient world in its despair. Unhappily, 
the content of the immortality proffered was attenuated in 
comparison with that deeply spiritual idea of eternal life 
found in the Fourth Gospel or with the Pauline mystical 
conception of a life ‘hid with Christ in God,’ but in the 
purpose of Him who reveals Himself ‘in many portions and 
in many manners’ these ancient Mysteries whetted the 
appetite of men for the larger life which Christians were to 
proclaim as found in a knowledge of God through Jesus 
Christ. The means of attaining that immortal life in the 
Mysteries were for the most part ceremonial and often too 
external to touch the springs of conduct,’ so that a saved man 
was not necessarily a moral man; but Paul himself discovered 
that it was easier to secure converts than to reform their 
morals. 

It would run counter to our evidence and to what we 
know of human nature to deny that there were conversions 
and transformations of character among the members of 
the Mystery-brotherhoods. Many a woman among them 
was as chaste as the Paulina of Josephus’ story, or as 
her namesake, the wife of Praetextatus. Doubtless the 
evil lives of the thyrsus-bearing votaries attracted more 
public attention than the virtuous, as is unfortunately the 
case with scandals in our own day. That many of these 
ancient mystae did ‘ taste the powers of the world to come’ 
is beyond dispute. The glowing religious language of 

1 Cf. Times, March 31, '24. * Cf. Gardner, ib. p. 87. 


FAITH INSPIRED BY INITIATION 143 


Pindar and Sophocles, the emphatic testimony of Cicero 
and Plutarch, the mystic chorus of the Cretans, the thanks- 
giving prayer of Apuleius, the Hymn-book of the Orphic 
communities and the Hymn of Regeneration in the Hermetic 
literature are only examples that might be multiplied 
from literature and corroborated from inscriptions. E.g. 
Vincentius, a believer of Mithra, has on his sepulchral stone 4 
carved a relief representing his deceased wife, Vibia, being 
led through an arched doorway into the unknown by a 
draped figure to which the name ‘ Good Angel’ is given. 
Or we may refer to the notable epitaph * of Paulina on her 
gifted husband, Praetextatus, in which she thanks him 
beyond the tomb for having saved her from death by 
initiation into the mysteries of the Great Mother, and Attis, 
Hecate, and Demeter of Eleusis. She closes the epitaph 
with an assertion of faith that she will be his again beyond. 


Gel Gul wt 42s ARG ee Ve The 779; 


CHAPTER IV 


THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


A. CONDITIONS FAVOURABLE TO THE SPREAD OF THE 
MYSTERIES 


Ty Aapmrp~e Br€mopuev rots & Bupaciw ovdév opGuev.—ORPHIC VERSE. 


AT first sight it seems inexplicable that the Oriental mystic 
and even orgiastic cults, so humble and barbarous in their 
origin, frowned upon on their first entry by the governments, 
winning the majority of their followers from the lower, 
slave and artisan, classes, supported for centuries by private 
contributions,! often exacting austerities and maintaining 
customs which exposed the votary to the derision of the 
crowd, and even endangered his health, should have exercised 
such an increasing sway over the Graeco-Roman world, 
and, but for Christianity, would have conquered. They 
did not afford the only religious refuge of the age: why 
did they afford arefuge tosomany ? There were intellectual 
systems like Greek philosophy, and Gnosticism ; there were 
ethical forces like Judaism, while state-religion asserted itself 
in repeated pagan revivals and most conspicuously in the 
imperial cult. These entailed practically no outlay on the 
part of their adherents. But the mystery-cults demanded 
that self-sacrifice which has always distinguished Free 
Churches as contrasted with Established Churches or philo- 
sophic schools. Reflect on what it cost to be a regular 
adherent of the Isiac cult. There were the austerities and 
fasts, which could not be agreeable to the flesh. Festal white 
robes had to be procured in honour of the deity, and would 


1 It would seem that Sir William Ramsay’s statement (Hist. Com. on 
Galatians, p. 457) concerning voluntary liberality in ancient religion re- 
quires some modification: ‘‘ The duty was one that was quite novel in 
ancient society. It was something that no convert from Paganism had 
been accustomed to.” 


144 


MYSTERY-CULTS COSTLY 145 


regularly demand the fuller’s services. The well-equipped 
Isaea had to be erected and the cost of maintenance met by 
those who used them. An elaborate and expensive priest- 
hood had to be maintained by the offerings of the faithful. 
On an ostracon !in the Berlin Museum, bearing date August 
4, A.D. 63, a priest of Isis gives a receipt to a working man 
thus: ‘I have received from you four drachmae, one obol, 
as collection of Isis for the public worship.” Devotion to the 
Egyptian Madonna resulted in costly statues adorned with 
abundance of precious stones.*. Even the inventory of the 
articles * in one small shrine of Isis proves amazing liberality. 
An inscription from Delos‘ of about 200 B.c. tells how 
Serapis in a dream-oracle objects to the continuance of his 
cult in hired premises and demands the building of a 
temple.§ Although Apuleius was the son of a rich municipal 
official, from whom he and his brother inherited the large 
fortune of two million sesterces,’ he was obliged to sell his 
scanty wardrobe to procure funds sufficient for initiation into 
the rites of Osiris after having been admitted to those of 
Isis... The frescoes of Herculaneum give some idea of the 
sacerdotal college attached to any regular Isaeum. There 
were the senior or high priest and assistant priests and 
acolytes. These sacerdotes, unlike the semi-civic priests of 
Greece and Rome, devoted all their time to their ecclesiastical 
offices, and did not generally earn their living by practising 
a craft or speculating in a business, The altar fires had 
to be supplied and tended, and the morning sacrifices to be 
provided. In the statutes of the Iobacchoi of Athens are 
regulations as to the contributions of each member and the 
penalty for default of payment.’ The museum of Thebes 


1 Wilcken, Gr. Ostraka, II. 413 : photoin Deissmann, Licht, 4th ed., p. 84. 

* Eg. C_I.L. It. 3386. 

8 Lafaye, Hist. du Culte, p. 135. 

4 7.G. XI. 4, no. 1299. 

8 Cf. Weinrich, Neue Urkunden s. Sarapis-veligion, p. 19 ff. 

&§ Apologia, 23. 

7 Met. XI. 28—‘ veste ipsa mea quamvis parvula distracta sufficientem 
conrasi summulam.’ 

8 L. 36 ff. Maas, Orpheus, p. 20 f. 


If 


146 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


contains an inscription ! detailing the offerings to the Kabiri 
for one season (cir. 332 B.C.). In special cases long pilgrim- 
ages were made, which entailed absence from the ordinary 
means of earning a livelihood, in addition to costly fares paid 
to greedy ship-masters, and the still more costly land travel- 
ling. Moreover, some eager souls? in pursuit of salvation 
sought initiation into several Mysteries, though how the 
cost was met by any but the rich is difficult for us to con- 
jecture, for men had to earn their bread then as now. The 
prosperous Syrian merchant, the Jewish banker, the Roman 
landlord, the successful Greek physician, the speculating 
freedman could afford to indulge in any expenditure for 
religion; but these upper classes constituted a smaller 
minority then than nowadays. Of course there was much 
voluntary service given by slaves, artisans, and soldiers; but 
all this was rendered outside the long hours of toil, and is 
itself a testimony to the deep conviction on the part of 
candidates that there was something worth while in the 
Mysteries. It is true that in the religious guilds the rich 
members laudably realized their brotherhood with their 
poorer ‘ brethren,’ and often bore the whole or the chief 
part of the expenses incurred in the maintenance of the cult 
and in furnishing the sacred meals. In the regular offerings 
the poor contributed their mite, and they that were rich 
brought much. Unselfishness and generosity were by no 
means unknown virtues among the pagans, and were not 
invariably conspicuous in Christian guilds, as we may infer 
from Paul’s description of the abuses in connexion with the 
Agape in Corinth. 

The taurobolium cannot have been other than costly. 
The officiating priest’s stipend had to be paid, the labour 
supplied, the timber prepared for the trench, the bull, 
doubtless of exceptional quality, had to be purchased ; the 

1 To which the Ephor, Kyr. N.G. Pappadakis, drew my attention. 

? E.g. Tatian, Lucius’ three initiations in the Metamorphoses, and his 
statement in Apologia 55 ‘ sacrorum pleraque initia in Graecia participavi’ ; 
also Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Pausanias, Aurelius Antonius (C.J.G. 


6206; JI.G.S.I. 1449), Praetextatus and Paulina, Tertullian, Proclus (In 
Plat, Theol. I. 19, p. 53; VI. 11), Pythagoras, and others. 


GENEROSITY OF VOTARIES 147 


sacramental garments, saturated in blood, were either 
fulled or kept as souvenirs of the baptismal rebirth, and so 
rendered economically valueless. 

Some idea of the demands made upon the generosity of 
votaries in the construction and upkeep of the Mithraea may 
be gathered from the fact that the second largest Mithraeum 
discovered, that of Sarmizegethusa, had accommodation 
for a maximum of 100 members, while the majority of the | 
chapels could not accommodate a half of this number. 
Upon this limited sodalicium fell the cost of the excavation 
of the grotto, the arching of the roof, the chiselling of stone 
benches for the worshippers, the altar with its sacrifices, 
the carving of the Tauroctony and the Mithraic agape, 
the sacred meals and initiations, the holy lights, and all 
the other cult apparatus. The ‘ brethren’ were generally 
legionaries whose stipendium was small, or oriental slaves 
whose peculium was modest indeed. 

Enough has been said to make it clear that votaries in the 
Mysteries were not—generally speaking—prompted to seek 
initiation with a view to material gain, or to find a cheap 
religion, or to escape tithes. Indeed, these ancient initiates 
had recourse to religions which were costly because those 
religions which were provided free failed to lay hold of their 
imagination or satisfy their religious cravings. 

As the Mysteries themselves presented a good and a bad 
side, so there were among their adherents and priests good, 
bad, and indifferent. Human nature being what it is, some 
initiates lived in the high latitudes of spiritual exaltation, 
enjoying religious serenity, while others remained content 
with the external pomp and symbolism, only vaguely 
intelligible to them, and never surmounted a superstition 
which saw in religion a magic or means of compulsion to be 
applied to the deity for selfish ends. Doubtless entrance 
into the Mysteries was sought from base motives by some. 
For the ordinary members initiation entailed financial loss 


1 Cf. Cumont, T. et Mon. I, pp. 65, 328; Mysteries of M., p. 170. Toutain, 
II, p. 143; Legge, II. p. 269. The largest known Mithraeum is that of the 
Baths of Caracalla, discovered 1912. 


148 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


rather than gain, but unscrupulous priests had abundant 
opportunity of using their holy office for self-aggrandizement. 
The sordid transaction of the senior priest of Isis, as told by 
Josephus, though an extreme case, is hardly solitary. The 
zeal of highly organized priesthoods, like that of Isis, 
for donations and endowments probably corresponded to a 
similar zeal on the part of the abbots and friars of the 
Middle Ages, such as is exposed, e.g. in Scott’s Fair Maid 
of Perth. It is quite clear from Apuleius’ account of the 
repeated initiations of Lucius! that the Egyptian priests 
at Cenchreae and Rome took advantage of his credulity 
to enrich their cult and so benefit themselves. The initiatory 
fee was fixed by the goddess herself (chs. 21, 22). A list of 
things required was furnished by the priest, which Lucius 
provided with even greater liberality than was necessary (23). 
At his initiation he was clad in ‘the cloak of Olympus,’ very 
richly embroidered, in which he was presented to his fellow- 
worshippers, after which followed feasts and banqueting, for 
which doubtless Lucius himself had paid in hard cash (24). 
A year later the goddess’s grasping priests advised a further 
initiation into the rites of Osiris (27), for which it was ne- 
cessary to sell his clothes to procure the necessary fees (28), 
and shortly thereafter the goddess required a third initiation 
(29), in the preparation for which he was ‘ guided by the 
enthusiasm of my faith rather than the measure of my 
fortunes,’ relying on his earnings as a professor of 
rhetoric at Rome (30). The priesthood might be sought 
because of the secured income attached to its functions, 
because of the powerful influence wielded by it over 
the initiates, or because of the opportunity for in- 
fluencing public opinion, or even, in later days, for 
interfering in politics. 

In the history of every religion there are cases of flagrant 
abuse of holy offices on the part of the ecclesiastics, to which 
charge even the Christian Church is unable to plead Not 
guilty. Into the ordinary ranks of the initiates some were 
drawn by curiosity, some by the habit of that age of forming 

1 Met. XI. 21-30. 


PERSECUTIONS OF MYSTERY-CULTS 149 


guilds, some by the love of elaborate ritual and pompous 
ceremonial, some from a desire to share in the sacred meals 
and participate in the doles made to the destitute members 
from the coffers of the society, or in order to be assured of 
religious interment. 

A further obstacle to the success of the Mysteries—an 
item to be placed on the credit side of their long list— 
was the repeated and severe persecutions which their 
adherents suffered from pagan and Christian governments.! 
Some of these repressive measures were due to the de- 
linquencies rather than to the virtues of the mystae. But 
if some Mystery-Church historian had left behind an 
authentic account of all the persecutions endured by many 
generations of Mystery-believers, who have passed off the 
scene without an advocate, it would have been an interesting 
document for the history of the human spirit in its Godward 
strivings ; it would have filled up many of the lacunae in 
any enquiry as to the enthralling power of this type of 
religion for a thousand years. 

It is generally agreed among students of the history of 
religion that a religion should be judged by its ideals and 
positive achievements rather than by its sordid aspects and 
failures. The necessity for such a criterion will be obvious 
if we reflect what a distorted history of Christianity a 
Mithraic or Orphic historian might have composed if he 
dwelt upon conspicuous instances of uncharitableness, abuse, 
and ambition on the part of Christian ecclesiastics, the 
intense hatred of Christian teachers towards heretics, the 
violations of the Christian sacrament, as at Corinth, and the 
superstitions of the lower orders of Christian believers. 
When he had said his worst, perhaps, Christianity would 
compare not unfavourably with the Mystery-Religions ; but 
it would be a debased Christianity. 

There were many favouring circumstances, positive and 
negative, in the conditions of the Greek world of Alexander 
and the Diadochi, and in the Roman Empire, which furthered 
Orientalism in the West, and prepared the way for the 

CH pHOo.F 


150 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


Mysteries. The most decisive of such factors may be 
enumerated : 

‘I, The Greek revival of the sixth century B.c and the 
subsequent influence of Orphism. Two or three centuries 
before Alexander Orphism had invaded the Greek world,? 
and sown the seeds of the mysticism to which the Mystery- 
Religions appealed, and to which they gave a new impetus, 
and had also turned the minds of men to another world. 
Orphism might be termed the harbinger of the Mystery- 
Religions and Christianity in the West,? and its success 
regarded as the first promise of the long dominance of 
Oriental religious thought in the Mediterranean world. 

Orphism, the greatest revival in Greek religion,? proved a 
force of far-reaching importance through its influence on 
Heraclitus, Plato, Pythagoreanism, Greek Mysteries, Neo- 
Platonism, and on such writers as Aeschylus, Sophocles, 
Euripides, Pindar, and Virgil.‘ It appeared at a time of 
great social upheaval when the very foundations of life 
seemed to be tottering. It confronted the situation by 
shifting the centre of interest from mere earthly existence, 
and making life here but a preparation for a life beyond. 


1 For its increased activity in the Hellenistic era (third cent. B.c. onwards) 
v. Macchioro, Zagreus, p. 265. 

2 “On parle beaucoup aujourd’hui de l’importance qu’a eue l’Orphisme 
pour la préparation du Christianisme, mais on affirme plus qu’on ne prouve : 
on ne peut cependant nier que ce fut une étape. . . . Il est vrai, en tout 
cas, que les idées chrétiennes et le rituel chrétien ont pris beaucoup aux 
mystéres et a l’Orphisme, encore qu’on ait souvent exagéré ces emprunts.’’— 
C. de la Saussaye, p. 566 f. Macchioro (Zagreus, p. 269) answers the 
question, “‘ What was the historic action of Orphism throughout the 
centuries ?’”’ thus: “‘ A primordial mystical activity of the human spirit, 
originating in a very remote age through an unconscious and immanent 
activity of our thought, Orphism accompanied the Greek people along all 
the stages of their evolution from magic to philosophy, from mysticism to 
rationalism, until at length, in its ultimate conquest, it was transformed 
and spiritualized in passing into Christianity (diventando cristianesimo)— 
a wonderful example of that aspiration by which humanity has been raised 
from the formless thought of the savage to the sublimest heights of the 
spirit.”’ 

3 Cf. Gruppe, Griech. Mythologie, II, p. 1016 ff. 

* For influence of Orphism on poetry, philosophy, and plastic art cf. 
Macchioro, Zagreus, pp. 248 f., 260f.; Evraclito (passim). 


SPREAD OF ORPHISM I51 


Orphism introduced a theology of redemption. It taught a 
doctrine of original sin. Man’s nature was dualistic, com- 
posed of the titanic elements closely associated with the body, 
and the dionysiac elements which were allied with the soul. 
By an ascetic morality the former must be repressed and the 
latter cultivated, to the end that the soul may escape ‘ from 
the body as from a tomb,’ and may cease to be subject 
to the weary xvKdos Ths yevéoews, ‘cycle of reincarna- 
tion.’ ‘I have flown out of the sorrowful wheel,’ says the 
Orphic initiate on the Compagno tablet.1 Orphism stood 
opposed to the calm Hellenic religion by giving to life 
a more sombre colour and by introducing such a conception 
of sin as entailed atonement. On the Dionysiac type of 
Greek religion it laid hold and remodelled it to its purpose. 
This Dionysiac religion, like Orphism, was of northern 
Thracian provenance, and was fraught with orgiastic- 
mystic elements,’ on which Orphism fastened, adopting its 
emotionalism, its doctrine of Enthousiasmos, and of posses- 
sion by the deity, rejecting its wild frenzy, and transforming 
its savage ritual into a sacramental religion. 

Asceticism, ‘the Orphic life,’ was the primary condition 
of the attainment of salvation, the means by which the true 
Orphic delivered his soul from the pollution of the body and 
escaped the long series of purificatory punishments in Hades. 
This stern religion, with its anthropology uncongenial to the 
Greek world-affirming ethic, its emphasis on sin and the 
need of a cathartic ritual, its relative indifference to civic 
as compared with personal righteousness, must have 
appeared to Greek theologians somewhat in the light in which 
Puritanism appeared to Elizabethan politicians. 

The Orphic note was one that never died out of all 
subsequent Greek and Hellenistic-Roman religion. The 
prestige of Orphism is well attested in the numerous counter- 
feits by the Orpheotelestae (of whom Plato speaks so 
scathingly, while he speaks respectfully of Orpheus) and 


1 G, Murray in Harrison, Proleg. p. 670; Olivieri, p. 4. 
2“ Der Quellenpunkt aller griech. Mystik liegt in der Dionysischen 
Religion ’’ (Rohde, Religion der Griechen, p. 332). 


152 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


metargyrtae, mendicant magic-mongers, and other charlatans 
who traded on the fair name of Orpheus. Orphism broke 
new ground and prepared the West for the Mystery-Religions 
and for Christianity in some important respects. (1) It 
was the first factor that successfully disturbed the Hellenic 
serenity of worship by introducing into the religious 
consciousness the conception of sin, never since eradicated 
in the West, and influencing all European thought, and by 
demanding rigid penances and purifications. Contrary to 
the prevalent Greek idea of a life according to nature, the 
body was viewed as a ‘ prison’ or ‘tomb’ of the soul. Life 
became a grim struggle between the Titanic and the 
Dionysiac elements in man’s nature, by which the Orphic 
became increasingly Dionysiac or divine till he reached 
the goal, ‘ Happy and blessed one, thou shalt be god instead 
of mortal.’ (2) Hence purity received a new emphasis which 
was ‘‘ destined to make an ever-widening appeal, and to 
rank as one of the most impressive factors in the evolution 
of Hellenic religion.”»! A new ideal was put before the 
mind of the West, that of oowrns or Holiness, by the path 
of doxnows rather than that of happiness -by self-expres- 
sion. Unfortunately the Orphics in this, as in so many other 
details, endeavoured to pour their new wine into old bottles, 
very much to the detriment of their evangel of Holiness. 
Their remedies for defilement were too ceremonial. There 
was the higher Orphism which could feed on spiritual 
mysticism * and derive its incentives from the future 
prospect of divinity or a divine humanity. But there was 
the lower and popular Orphism which used the machinery of 
future punishments,? such as that referred to by Plato ‘ 


1 Kennedy, St. Paul, p. 16. 

2 Miss Harrison (Proleg. 587) speaks of the higher Orphism as “ a faith 
so high that it may be questioned whether any faith, ancient or modern, 
has ever out-passed it,’’ while recognizing its lower and magical side. 

3 On the strong predilection of the Orphics for descriptions of the pains 
of hell compared with their reticence as to the nature of the blissful 
existence of the divine life into which the initiated entered, cf. Macchioro, 
Orf. e Paol, p. 261 f. 

4 In the Orphic myth of Er., Repub, X 614B 


ORPHIC GOSPEL A PREPARATION 153 


and described in the Homeric Nekyia,1 and by Pseudo- 
Plato in the Axiochus,? by Virgil, and by Plutarch in his 
De Occultim Vivendo, to persuade men to live ‘the 
Orphic life’ and undergo Orphic initiation, incidentally 
paying the fees. The Orphics themselves confessed that 
many are called but few chosen. (3) Orphism did a lasting 
service to Greek and subsequent religion by rescuing the 
orgiastic Dionysiac * cult from the extravagances, savagery, 
and crudities which would have disgusted the Greek spirit, 
the sympathy of which was necessary for the success of any 
religion in the Graeco-Roman world,‘ and thus gave free 
scope to the enthusiastic and mystical tendencies of Diony- 
siac faith. Orphism was built on Dionysiac ritual and 
mythology. The god of their ritual was Dionysos, especially 
in the mystic and chthonic form of Dionysos-Zagreus, while 
the esoteric God was Eros, or Love. The principle of the 
Orphic Reformation was the sound one of using to the 
utmost the old material to hand, a principle which, however, 
Orphism observed too strictly by conserving naturalistic 
practices from Dionysos and the earlier Pelasgic animism 
which might with greater profit have been surrendered in 
spite of the facility with which they lent themselves to the 
imaginative symbolism of the age. Orphism spoke through 
the commonplace and familiar ; many simple rites took on 
a new mystic value. In primitive sympathetic magic could 
be discovered organs of spiritual mysticism. Telluric rites 
could be raised to eschatological. Dionysiac divine posses- 
sion could be theologized into incarnation or identification 
with the divine. ‘“‘ The great step which Orpheus took 
was that, while he kept the old Bacchic faith that a man 
might become a god, he altered the conception of what a 
god was, and he sought to obtain that godhead by wholly 

1 Od. XI. 34 ff. ; cf. Wilamowitz-Mollendorf, Hom. Unters. p. 199 ff. 

2 Cf. Les Enfers selon l’Axiochus in Comptes rendus de l’Acad. des Inscr, 
1920, pp. 272-85. 

* Cf. Harrison, Proleg. p. 474 ff. 

4 Harnack (Mission and Exp. Il, p. 317) finds the chief cause of the 
failure of Mithraism in the fact that “‘ almost the entire domain of Hellenism 
was closed toit.”’ Cf. Vollers, Weltreligionen, p. 127. 


154 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


different means. The grace he sought was not physical 
intoxication, but spiritual ecstasy; the means he adopted 
not drunkenness, but abstinence and rites of purification.” 1 
The flute and maddening cymbals of the Wine-god were 
superseded by the Orphic lyre. By thus informing the savage 
rites from Thrace with the spirit of order the Dionysiac, 1.e. 
mystic-ecstatic, means of union with the divine was preserved 
for Greek religion, Neo-Platonism, and Christianity. (4) 
Such a religion was inevitably concerned primarily with 
the salvation of the individual soul—a startlingly new 
religious conception, enhancing the ideal of personal 
responsibility and making religion essentially a matter of a 
man’s own moral choice. The incongruity of this doctrine 
with the absolute rights of the State was to appear in 
exaggerated form when the subjects of the Roman Empire 
flocked into the Oriental individualistic cults. (5) In another 
respect the Orphics prepared for the “‘ free church ”’ principle 
of the Mysteries and of Christianity. The Orphic cult- 
brotherhoods established the practice of voluntary associa- 
tion for religious purposes which became pronounced from 
the days of Alexander the Great. (6) Orphism was steeped 
in sacramentarianism which flooded the later Mysteries and 
flowed into Christianity. Salvation was by sacrament, by 
initiatory rites, and by an esoteric doctrine.* Rites per- 
formed religiously on earth affected the lot beyond, as is 
clear from the language of the Orphic tablets. One such 
sacrament is referred to in the confession from one of the 
Compagno tablets: ‘I have sunk beneath the bosom of 
Persephone, Queen of the Underworld.’* But the sacra- 
mental was all too easily confused with the archaic, so that 
exalted religious feeling and nonsense often lay close 
together, as in the mystic confession of identification with 
Dionysos in a fragment of Euripides’ Cretans, preserved by 
Porphyry : 

1 Harrison, 7b. 477. We should write Orphism where Miss Harrison 


writes Orpheus, who is to her “‘a real man, a reformer, and possibly a 
martyr.” 


* The Orphics were ‘ the Wise’; cf. Adam. Repub. of Plato, II, p. 378. 
3 VY. Olivieri, Lamellae aur. orph., p. 7. 


FOR THE MYSTERIES AND CHRISTIANITY 155 


‘ There in one pure stream 


My days have run, the servant I, 

Initiate of Idean Jove ; 

Where midnight Zagreus roves, I rove ; 
I have endured his thunder cry ; 


Fulfilled his red and bleeding feasts ; 
Held the Great Mother’s mountain flame ; 
I am set free and named by name 

A Bacchus of the Mailéd Priests. 


Robed in pure white, I have borne me clean 
From man’s vile birth and coffined clay, 
And exiled from my lips alway 

Touch of all meat where life hath been.’ ! 


The tablet of Caecilia Secundina also shows how readily 
Orphic sacraments could degenerate into magic rites. (7) 
Orphic Purity, by which man attained divinity, could not 
be secured by mere self-reliance. Special divine help was 
requisite, a sacramental grace communicated by initiation. 
Thus, the optimistic or anthropocentric religious view of the 
West retreated before the humbler and theocentric view of 
the helplessness of man.* This conviction quickened the 
yearning for redemption and created a demand for the 
sacramental grace of the Mysteries and Christianity. (8) The 
Orphic movement was the most potent and pervasive of the 
early syncretistic forces which reached their strength in the 
heyday of the Mysteries. (g) It was also the first promise 
of that later wide-spread and influential phase of religion 
known as Gnosticism—in its esoteric doctrines, elaborate 
cosmogonies and theogonies, and its fundamental dualism. 
(10) The Orphics were apparently the first to introduce the 
allegoric method into theology. This innovation arose from 
their desire to retain the maximum of primitive ritual and 
from the consequent necessity of reconciling the archaic with 
the modern, and of mysticizing the commonplace. 

1 G. Murray’s tr. 

2 Cf. Gruppe, II, p. 1016. Rohde well remarks: ‘‘ Das Selbstverlass des 
alten Griechentums ist hier gebrochen ; schwachmiithig sieht der Fromme 
nach fremder Hilfe aus; er bedarf Offenbarungen u. Vermittlungen 


‘ Orpheus des Gebieters,’ um den Weg zum Heil zu finden, u. angstlicher 
-Beachtung seiner Heilsordnung, damit man ihn gehen kénne ”’ (II, p. 124) 


156 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


II. The collapse of the wonderful city-state system of the 
Mediterranean world, dating in Greece intellectually from 
the rise of Sophism and politically from the Peloponnesian 
War, and in Rome from the second Punic War. With it 
collapsed the religion of which it was the expression. The 
State religions of Greece and Rome suffered the fate of every 
religion which allies itself with a political system: it shared 
their glory in their halcyon days, and it shared their disaster 
in their disintegration.1 The fall of the polis and the rise 
of the Greek Kingdoms and the Roman Empire ruined 
the prestige of state religions, while the commotion and 
insecurity of the period undermined the faith of the populace 
in their ancestral gods. The religious instinct in man drove 
him to look elsewhere for religious support. The Northern 
and Western hinterlands of Graeco-Roman civilization lay 
in barbarism: where else could men look save to the 
immemorial home of religion—ex ortente lux? The Oriental 
religions were not limited to one language, nor bound up 
with any one definite political system, or, if with any, with 
that toward which Rome drifted steadily for centuries— 
despotism. The Mysteries had in them a power of expansion 
and the germ of universalism which were lacking in the 
Olympian or Capitoline theologies. 

The breaking up of the city-state conduced to individualism 
and at the same time catholicity in religion, created a social 
vacuum to be filled by the religious guilds, gave the masses 
a freer hand to assert their superstitio, and immensely 
facilitated religious syncretism. 

III. The unification of mankind inaugurated by Alexander 
and consummated by Rome made the religion of each people 
or race of interest to all, and so inaugurated a process which 
would issue in the survival of the fittest. If all men were 
theoretically equal their religions were on an equality and 
the path of access from one to the other was facilitated. 
Where men of every degree of culture, of every civilized 
race, and representative of every ancient religion met 


1 Cf. Kaerst, II. pt. I, pp. 204-8; W. Fowler, The City-State of the 
Greeks and Romans. 


REACTION OF EAST UPON WEST 157 


together under the rule of one man there was ample room for 
the interchange of thought. The trend was toward univer- 
salism, and the only religion which had promise of a future 
was that which could disentangle, or had disentangled, itself 
from particularism of caste or creed or government. This 
unification found expression in the ‘‘ marriage of East and 
West,” and in eclecticism in philosophy and syncretism in 
religion, whereby men were lifted above the prejudices of 
nationalism and the narrowness of state churches. 

IV. The powerful reflex action of the East upon the West 
in those respects in which its genius was superior to that of 
Greece and Rome, viz. religion, industry, and commercial 
enterprise. And not in these only, for some departments 
in which Greece and Rome considered themselves specialists 
were contested by Eastern talent with considerable success. 
As the Orient has at all times devoted itself to religious 
contemplation with the zeal with which the West has 
developed political life the growing religious preponderance 
of the East is not to be wondered at. But in other respects 
the East entered upon that career of ascendancy over the 
West which culminated in the establishment of the imperial 
cult, in Aurelius’ institution in A.D. 263 of the official cult of 
Sol Invictus, in the absolutism of Diocletian, the declaration 
of Diocletian and his colleagues at Carnuntum in 307 of 
Mithra as patron (fautor) of the empire, the transference of 
the centre of gravity from Rome to the East by the founding 
of Constantinople, and lastly in the victory of the religion of 
Galilee. As the Greeks, when they turned eastward to 
hellenize Asia, themselves learned Asiatic ways, so the 
Romans fell under the spell of the riper and richer culture of 
the East. Cumont has done much to dispel “‘ cette illusion 
d’optique ”’—the traditional belief in the superiority of the 
West to the East and in the senility of Oriental life.1 The 
penetration of the East into the West occurred in many ways, 
and was at last so complete that the Orontes and the Nile 
were pouring their waters into the Tiber. Alexander gave 


' “Tis excellent dans toutes les professions hormis celle de soldat’’ 
( R. Or, 2nd ed., p. 3). 


158 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


the weight of his authority to the military policy of 
strengthening the army by levies of Oriental recruits, and of 
making the Orientals feel proud of service with the Greeks, 
as Indian troops have been proud to fight side by side with 
British comrades on many afield. In the constantly engaged 
armies of the Diadochi there was a similar opportunity for 
Orientals to mingle with Europeans. Rome adopted the 
same policy, and drew recruits from nearly all the eastern 
provinces. These soldiers were devoted to their religions 
and became propagandists for it. Greece and Rome had 
neither the faith nor the enthusiasm of which the missionary 
Spirit is born. The thousands of Oriental slaves who were 
transported westward from second century B.c. onward con- 
tributed their share toward the subjugation of Rome to the 
East. Under the Roman Peace the merchants, bankers, and 
exporters were largely Oriental. Industrially the East 
supplied the manufactured articles which Italy and the 
West needed. It was the wealth of the Orient that first 
under Alexander introduced luxury and extravagance into 
the West, and again during the Republican wars of conquest. 
And it was Oriental treasures that stimulated the taste and 
paid for Oriental articles of luxury—unguents, atars, tapes- 
tries of Damascus, silks of China, spices of Arabia. The 
large and numerous Greek-Asiatic cities throughout Asia 
enjoyed great prosperity in catering for the taste of the West, 
and with their material wares their merchants carried also 
the things of the spirit. Greek philosophy, which went forth 
so splendidly equipped to educate the world, was semi- 
orientalized after Aristotle, really the last Greek philosopher. 
The founders of Stoicism, Zeno and Cleanthus, came from the 
East, and with Stoicism Greek thought became as much 
Oriental as Greek. Posidonius, who adapted Stoicism to 
Roman character, came from Apamea in Syria. Neo- 
Pythagoreanism was more Oriental than Greek, and Neo- 
Platonism was founded by Plotinus of Alexandria. Cumont, 
in supporting his thesis that ‘‘the history of the empire 
during the first three Christian centuries resolves itself 
into a pacific penetration of the Occident by the Orient,” 


THE CRY OF THE MASSES 159 


points out that ‘‘ le mirage d’un empire oriental’’ became 
the directing thought of the dictator Caesar and the triumvir 
Antony, while Nero meditated transporting his capital to 
Alexandria, and in his last moments deliberated on begging 
the province of Egypt from his victorious rival. Rome was 
organized by Augustus after the fashion of an Egyptian 
capital, and the fiscal reforms of the Caesars were inspired by 
the financial system of the Lagids. In the domain of law, 
in which the Romans were most original and successful, 
Oriental customs were virile enough to withstand or modify 
Roman usage. Many of the famous jurists were Syrians, such 
as Ulpian of Tyre and Papinian of Hermesa. The law 
school of Beyrout increased in prestige from the third until in 
the fifth century it was the leading centre of juristic study. 
In the realm of science we find the Orientals prominent : 
“the majority of the great astronomers, mathematicians, 
physicians, as of the great founders or defenders of meta- 
physical systems, are Oriental.” In literature, art, and 
architecture the Orientals competed successfully with the 
West, and modified Western ideas. All this facilitated the 
spread of the Mystery-Religions, for the peoples of the 
Orient, unlike those of Greece and Rome, were proselytizers. 
The penetration of the politically subject but otherwise 
dominant Orientals had set the fashion for things Oriental 
which was enhanced by the prestige arising from the 
antiquity of Oriental institutions. The fascination 
of the Orient, refined and humanized by Hellenism, 
gave rise to a long-dominant romanticism in Greece and 
Italy. 

VY. Another factor deserves attention in the changing 
circumstances of the age as conducive to the spread of the 
Mystery-Religions—the growing influence of the masses and 
the concern which their demands caused the government 
circles. The Graeco-Roman age was a popularizing age,? 
during which the lower orders had to be humoured, amused 
and fed, and their religious needs satisfied. This holds true 


1 Cumont, p. 9 (Eng. tr., p. 6). 
2 Angus, Envivonment of Early Christianity, p. 11 f. 


160 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


of the post-Aristotelian period, but this aspect of social 
life came into prominence chiefly from the days of the 
Second Punic War, and reached its climax in the second and 
third centuries A.D. We can trace these popularizing 
tendencies in several directions, though more conspicuously 
in religious matters. The lingua franca, the vehicle of 
religious propaganda, was not the Greek of Periclean 
Athens, but the Greek of the market-place and the port and 
the field. Classical or Attic Greek had to stoop to conquer ; 
it took on the less precise and more direct character of the 
language spoken by and ‘ understanded of ’ the people, and 
received into its wortschatz vernacular and even alien 
elements. One might compare the victory of the native 
English tongue over the Norman-French court speech, or, in 
later centuries, both in Romance and in the Teutonic 
countries, the rise of the vernaculars in opposition to 
ecclesiastical Latin and their ultimate adaptation to literary 
purposes. 

After Aristotle Greek philosophy was popularized so far 
as philosophy may ever be said to be popular. The post- 
Aristotelian philosophy is not that of the secluded schools of 
Athens ; it is that which can be discussed by the average 
intelligent man on the highways of life. The main philo- 
sophical ideas had filtered down among the masses, and the 
chief results of systematic thinking had been reported to 
those to whom the results were of more direct interest than 
the processes. With Socrates philosophy first turned its 
attention upon man as a thinking subject; with the 
post-Aristotelian schools it abandoned the speculative sphere 
and directed its main attention to the practical questions of 
human conduct in which the ordinary man was interested. 
When, in the next century, from the second century B.c. 
onwards, Rome fell under the spell of Greek philosophy, 
she gave a more decidedly popular and practical turn to 
it. Cicero says that Socrates first brought down philosophy 
from heaven to earth, but it was Cicero himself who, through 
his translations and paraphrases of Greek philosophers and 
his outlines of the history of Greek philosophy, and by the 


POPULAR STRIVINGS AND RELIGION 161 


discovery of a vocabulary, first popularized philosophy in 
the Western world. 

But in the religious life more than in any other department 
we hear the lower classes knocking at the doors of the 
ruling classes with a persistency that does not brook refusal. 
This was observed by Roman writers themselves, who 
lament the rise of superstitio as against respectable religio. 
The uneducated are spiritually less independent than the 
reflective, and are less able to bear the burden of sin and 
the guilt of conscience. To them something corresponding 
to the Roman confessional is an imperative necessity. 
State religions in their heyday might repress this tendency, 
but in their decay, when the beautified temple and the 
elaborate ceremonial only testified to the splendour that had 
departed, the populace went its own way in search of 
religion. The history of the Second Punic War first brings 
into relief the religious policy of the Roman government— 
whether republican or imperial, pagan or Christian—of 
endeavouring to control the religion of the masses, or rather 
of controlling the masses by the instrumentality of religion. 
It is an interesting spectacle to observe how the governing 
class furnished a ready-made state religion to the masses and 
made it attractive in cult, and how, when this failed, the 
same class cleverly adopted and gave official recognition to 
whatever alien worship was for the moment popular and 
likely to restrain the fears of the people and keep them quiet. 
“Good order first’? was always the keynote of Roman 
administrative policy. In the introduction of the Magna 
Mater the hands of the government were really forced by 
the people, a fact which the government was shrewd enough 
to conceal from the excited people, assuming the rdle of 
bestowing a new religious boon which they had no power 
to withhold. Like many wise statesmen, the Roman rulers 
pretended to lead where they were in truth being led. 
From the days of the advent of the Great Mother from 
Pessinus till the adoption of Christianity by Constantine, 
we observe on the one hand the steadily increasing ascend- 
ancy of the religious cults and customs adopted by the 

I2 


162 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


populace and on the other the authorizing by the govern- 
ment of what in most instances it could not arrest.1 Before 
these popular strivings all the glory of the lovely gods of the 
Graeco-Roman pantheon paled, and the splendour and 
patriotism of the imperial cult. Neither official indifference 
nor restrictive measures could prevent the long-submerged 
views of the masses from coming to the surface. The cult 
of Isis-Serapis, though the most persecuted, became the 
most imposing because the populace willed it. The 
government vainly endeavoured to gain a monopoly of the 
current means of utilizing the supernatural, but the super- 
stition of the people thwarted all their efforts. The govern- 
ment recognized an official divinatio, but the populace had 
recourse to their own private divinatio. The Chaldaei and 
mathematict were repeatedly banished from Rome, but 
returned as often because they drove a lucrative trade with 
the masses. All the acrimony of the Roman satirists 
and the scorn of the Roman historians could not stay the 
spread of Judaism among the people. 

The masses were beginning to come to their own, and they 
brought with them those forms of religion—chiefly Oriental, 
chthonic, and archaic—which appealed to them ; the upper 
classes were compelled at different stages to acknowledge 
as fait accompli the progress of their rivals. 

To this popular striving there was a bad as well as a good 
side. On the debit side we may write the word superstitio 
and on the credit side mysticism. To the former belong 
many remains of naturalism which had never become extinct 
among the ignorant classes when the city-state was in its 
apogee, and these beliefs were resurrected with renewed 
power, and finally some of them commended themselves 
to all classes. Such was the practice of magic to com- 
pel the deity to one’s will, and the belief in the horoscope 
which spread with the practice of astrology. On the other 
hand, the people had no ulterior political motive in their 
search for religious support; they went in search of a 
new religion or new religions for religious purposes, and 

1 Cf. Boissier, 7th ed. II, pp. 238-304 


INCREASING INFLUENCE OF THE POPULACE 163 


we may venture to say that on the whole they were divinely 
guided to look in the right direction. 

The Oriental cults, affected by this popularizing tendency, 
stooped to conquer. Nearly all the religions of the Graeco- 
Roman world aimed at popularity, and, though never 
negligent of an opportunity to secure recruits among the 
upper and influential classes, strove to enrol the greatest 
number of adherents among the masses, as if conscious that 
in the end the vox populi would be the vox det. 

This emergence of popular tastes and self-consciousness, 
together with the correlative retreat of aristocratic influence, 
is a phenomenon forcibly borne in upon one in reading the 
records of the Graeco-Roman world; but it is easier to 
register the phenomenon than to confidently assign ade- 
quate causes. In the main such causes would be found 
in (x) the intellectual disintegration, the rationalism and 
scepticism of the upper classes, who, having lost faith in their 
orthodox religion and state-church, could not hope to 
maintain their hypocritical dissemblance for the sake of the 
masses ; (2) the decay of the city-state civilization which 
was favourable to the upper and leisured classes ; (3) the 
economic results of the Roman wars of conquest which, 
like all great upheavals, tended to impoverish the poor and 
enrich a few, with the result of a partial or complete dis- 
appearance of the middle classes. The Latifundia drove 
out the peasant proprietor, while the slave system imperilled 
the competition of the independent artisan and bourgeois. 
(4) Imperial proscriptions and decimations by exile, con- 
fiscation, and death of the upper, especially the sena- 
torial, classes weakened the prestige of the aristocrats and 
made the masses more conscious of their own power. The 
whims of the populace could place power in the hands of 
irresponsible dictators. The vote of the army, including 
provincialz, could dispose of the purple. The importance 
of popular sentiment in deciding the fate of an empire or 
a religion was forced upon an emperor like Julian. (5) The 


1 Cf. Ferrero, Ruin of Ancient Civilization, chs. 1 and II; Dill, Rom. Soc. 
Bk. 1, ch, -. 


164 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


increasing trend of the principate of Augustus into a 
despotism which cannot tolerate an influential aristocratic 
class, but humours and contents the masses. (6) The 
increasing proportion and influence of provincials and 
foreigners in the empire. (7) The rise and spread of the 
religious and trade guilds, composed mostly of the lower 
orders. 

The strength of this plebeian movement is indicated by the 
tribute paid to it by loftier movements. The great weakness 
of the Orphic reform lay in its lack of courage to abandon the 
popular basis and rituals of religion. Stoicism compromised 
with the populace by taking over its myths and treating them 
esoterically by allegorical exegesis. Neo-Platonism did not 
escape the spell of superstition; it degenerated into an 
unlovely theurgy or occultism. Monarchy, Diadochian and 
Roman alike, frowned upon spiritual movements! which 
endangered the peace of the masses. The Mystery- 
Religions catered for popular tastes. Even Christianity 
retains to this day traces of some popular beliefs and 
practices from the Mysteries. 

VI. Another circumstance highly favourable to the success 
of the Oriental religions was the dominance of astrology, or 
astralism, the nature and influence of which in the ancient 
world have been revealed within this generation by scholars 
like Usener, Bouché-Leclercq, Reitzenstein, Cumont, Kugler, 
Boll. In Greece and Italy there was a primitive and deeply- 
implanted mystic element *? which, like chthonic theology, 
could not come to its own in the heyday of classic faith, 
but which revitalized later paganism and lent a new energy 
of faith in its closing struggles. Such was the ‘ divine 
Mantic’ among the Greeks, and a somewhat different 
phenomenon, Divinatio, in Italy, the belief in both arising 
out of the instinctive desire to hold intercourse with the deity 
and out of a conviction that for the purposes of life the 

1 Cf. Dieterich, Kl. Sch., p. 460. ‘‘ Erst mit dem Erstehen der Monarchien 
beginnt eine planmassige Riicksichtnahme auf das religiése Empfinden 
breiterer Massen, die ja auch auf orient. Boden von Anfang an politische 


Notwendigkeit ist’ (Reitzenstein, Hell. Mysterienrel., p. 3). 
® Cf. Bouché-Leclercq, Hist. de la Divination, I. pp. 2-5. 


ASTROLOGY 165 


deity vouchsafes revelations of his will and of the future. 
Herein lay a point of contact for astralism in the Graeco- 
Roman world, in which it antiquated hitherto accepted 
methods of enquiring into “the future and its viewless 
things.” 

In regard to the relations of astral religion to the Oriental 
cults, Cumont says !: 


“Its success was connected with that of the Oriental 
religions, which lent it their support, as it also lent them its 
support. . . . Astrology was religious in its origin and its 
principles: it was religious also in its close alliance with 
the Oriental cults, particularly those of the Syrian Baals and 
Mithra: it was also religious in the effects which it 
produced.” 


It cannot be an accident that Oriental cults and astrology 
increased in power part passu and simultaneously. But 
astrology affected not only the church-like cults of Syria, 
Egypt, and Persia, but also semi-philosophical religions like 
Hermeticism and Gnosticism. Astrology had its home in 
Babylonia, where it was cultivated by the original Sumerians 
and bequeathed as a science and faith in one to the Baby- 
lonians, from whom it passed to the Persians, in whose 
religion it played a long and important rdle in Mazdaeism 
and Mithraism. It began its successful career westwards 
as a result of Alexander’s conquests. 


“Tn the first place, from the break-up of the Euphratean 
priestly colleges . . . and the driving out of the lesser 
priests therein to get their own living, and then from the 
fact that the scientific enquiry and mathematical genius 
of the Greeks had made the calculation of the positions of the 
heavenly bodies at any given date and hour a fairly simple 
matter.” * 


This alliance of Chaldean sacerdotalism and Greek science 


1 Rel. Or 2nd ed. pp. 241, 258 (Eng. tr., pp. 163, 174). 
2 Legge, II. 235; cf. Bouché-Leclercq, Divination, I, p. 206 ff.; Toutain, 
Cultes paiens, II, p. 181. 


166 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


continued to characterize astral religion through the later 
centuries, especially under the empire.1 Astrology, generally 
allied with magic, was from its nature a highly specialized 
art, at first an essentially aristocratic * faith-science, but 
because of its practical bearings on life it soon appealed 
to the populace, and, in spite of police regulations and 
imperial persecutions against the practitioners of the 
ars mathematica damnabilis, it won its way to universal 
acceptance and was as firmly believed in by the educated 
and ruling classes as by the lower orders.’ The Stoics, 
generally speaking, accepted it, and it was mainly through 
the teachings of Posidonius that the astral religion became 
domiciled in the West.‘ 

There are several respects in which astralism abetted the 
spread of Oriental cults both by way of alliance and in the 
resu'ts produced by it. 

The practice of astral lore necessitated the diligent con- 
templation of the shining heavenly bodies, which never have 
failed to inspire awe and awaken a religious sentiment of 
some kind. The beauty of the Eastern night, the long and 
silent contemplation, the intense practical religious purpose 
of the gazers—all conspired to induce that spirit of mystic 
ecstasy or cosmic emotion to which the Mysteries made 
their appeal’ and which they in turn magnified. In this 
lifting of man above himself, in prompting the desire for 
communion with the divinities of the shining constellations, 
in diminishing the sense of distance between heaven and 
earth, and in turning man’s thoughts to the future, astrology 
was working in the same domain as the Mystery-Religions. 

Astrology was also the foster-mother of that regnant 
Element-Mysticism, according to which the soul becomes 
part of that which it contemplates, and its elements bear 
affinity to the elements of which the cosmos is constituted.’ 

1 Dill, p. 93: ‘‘ Astrology was a Greek as well as a Chaldean art.”’ 

2 Cumont, R. Or. p. 244 (Eng. tr., p. 165). § Cf. Dill, 447. 

4 Cumont, 7b. p. 243 (Eng. tr. 164) ; Bouché-Leclercq, 7b. I, p. 274 f. 

5 Cf. Kennedy, p. 6 f. § Cf. Gardner, St. Paul, p. 61. 


7 Cf. Dieterich, Abraxas, p. 58 f.; Kennedy, p. 204; Cumont, R.O 
and ed., pp. 254, 264; Eisler, Weltenmantel u. Him. II, p 664. 


ASTROLOGY AND THE ORIENTAL CULTS 167 


It thus offered a synthesis or bond of unity, which ancient 
philosophers sought in vain, in a religious sympathy or 
homoeopathy of the elements of the universe. 

Astrology brought its adherents into connexion with 
Oriental priests because astrology was a religious science 
which had been practised from time immemorial by the 
sacerdotal colleges of the Eastern temples. It was 
sacerdotal in origin, and its adherents did not forget that it 
came from the temples of Chaldaea and Egypt. The “‘ Bible 
of Astrology ’’ was an Egyptian-Greek product,? the books 
going by the name of Nechepso and Petosiris* of the 
second century B.c. To the end it remained as much a faith 
as a science. ‘‘ Even in the West it never forgot its sacer- 
dotal origins, and never more than half freed itself from 
the religion which had given it birth: and it is in this 
respect it attaches itself to the Oriental cults.’’* Astrology 
thus enhanced the prestige of Eastern priests in the West 
because it viewed them as specialists in a hieratic science 
which had to do with a man’s affairs here and affected his 
whole destiny. It lent them a dignity and authority such 
as that with which the fear of excommunication clothed 
the mediaeval priest. 

It should also be noted that astrology—because of its 
immemorial antiquity and boasted scientific method— 
drew men away from the Western religions by antiquating 
Greek and Roman methods of enquiry into the future. 
Augury was practically abandoned, and haruspicy shared the 
same fate. The oracles, though they revived under the 
empire,‘ could not vie with the Chaldaei and mathematici in 
the number of enquirers. No longer the venerable Delphi 
was consulted with the same confidence*® in important 
political and military affairs, but the soothsayers and 
horoscope-readers of the East. 

Astrology benefited religion by casting its influence 


1 Bollin N. Jahrb f. d. Klass. Alt. XXI, p. 106. 

* V. Cat. Astrolog. Graec. VII, p. 129 ff. 

5’ Cumont, ib. pp. 251-2 (Eng: tr. 170). 

* According to Plutarch, De Def. Ovac. 

5 On the temporary revival of Delphi cf. Dempsey, p. 176 ff. 


168 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


on the side of the monotheistic tendency which was also 
favoured by Oriental cults. Though the Chaldaet paid most 
attention to the host of stars, they could not but recognize 
the premier place of the Sun among the seven planets and 
the stars. The Sun, as the source of heat and light, be- 
came the chief deity of the heaven, and Sun-worship was 
the ultimate result of astralism. From being the chief 
among all the heavenly bodies, the Sun became the repre- 
sentative of all by the familiar path from henotheism to 
monotheism. Sun-worship became an essential feature and 
indeed the centre! of all non-Christian religions in the closing 
empire. The Mystery-gods, like Serapis, Attis, and Mithra, 
were brought into most intimate relation with the Sun and 
finally identified with him. Thus astrology directed men’s 
attention to the heavens, among the luminaries of which the 
Sun was recognized as the chief and the source of life and 
light, then acknowledged as the supreme symbol of deity 
as embracing within his sphere all other lights, and finally 
the gods of the Mysteries were obliged to become assimilated 
to the supreme Sun. This solar monotheism, one of the 
latest aspects of paganism, arose in Syria, the chief centre 
of which was Palmyra, the ruins of which to this day 
eloquently attest the august character of solar worship. 
In the person of Heliogabalus, a high-priest of the Sun-god 
ascended the imperial throne and promoted the cause of the 
Sol invictus Elagabal more zealously than his subjects were 
prepared for; in the closing quarter of the third century 
Aurelian, son of a priestess of the Sun-god, proclaimed 
Sol invictus as protector of the empire and the imperial house, 
and equipped his worship with a college of Pontiffs. In the 
first decade of the fourth century (307) Diocletian proclaimed 
Mithra as Sol invictus, patron-god of the ents ete 
imperit Sut. 


Such were the main services? rendered by the astral 


1 Cf. art. Zodiacus in Daremberg-Saglio, V, p. 1056; Reville, p. 286 ff. 

* I.e. for religion. Astrology supported by magic was helpful to scien- 
tific knowledge. ‘‘ Their counterfeit learning has been a genuine help 
with the progress of human knowledge. Because they awakened chimeri- 


BANEFUL RESULTS OF ASTRALISM 169 


religion of the Eastern world. But there were two baneful 
results not wholly but mainly attributable to astrology. 
In its very nature astrology could not escape being a religion 
of fatalism,! and more than any other factor it made Fate 
a terrible and crushing power such as we can scarcely 
believe. Astrology also allied itself with, and conduced to, 
the practice of magic, a curse from which the non-Christian 
religions of the Greek and Roman world never entirely 
escaped. In the former respect, by fostering determinism, 
astrology produced a disease to discover a remedy or 
alleviation for which many fled to the Mystery-Religions,? 
which promised sacramental grace, divine sympathy and 
participation in the victory of the deity, and finally sidereal 
immortality, by which the soul ascended through the 
spheres whose constellations proved all-powerful for man’s 
weal and woe. In the latter respect, by encouraging magic, 
the acts of the Mystery-cults were often degraded into means 
of compelling the deity for selfish and even immoral ends. 
Unfortunately the Mystery-Religions, in their proselytizing 
zeal, were none too scrupulous in the choice of their allies, 
with whose fortunes they bound themselves. Some of these 
allies, such as imperial favour, proved broken reeds; others 
continued faithful to their Oriental affinities to the end, 
but sapped the life and finally arrested the progress of 
the tolerant cults which had enlisted their sympathy. At 
the close of the long struggle that religion was destined to 
win which relied on its intrinsic merits, and participated 
in the world-conquering faith of its Founder. 

VII. Resurgence of Chthonian Theology. In the re- 


cal hopes and fallacious ambitions in the minds of their adepts, researches 
were undertaken which undoubtedly would never have been started or 
persisted in for the sake of a disinterested love of truth. The observations, 
collected with untiring patience by the Oriental priests, caused the first 
physical and astronomical discoveries. . . . The occult sciences led to the 
exact ones’”’ (Cumont, R. or., Eng. tr. p. 194) 

1 Cf. Reitzenstein, Poim. pp. 77-9; Cumont, 7b. p. 264 ff. (Eng. tr.. 
p. 178); Fatalisme astrale et les religions antiques, Rev. d’hist. et de lit. rel., 
15 N.S. III. 6) ; Boll, ib. p. 108 ff. 

2 ‘Der Fatalismus hat als sein Gegenbild den Mystizismus’”’ (Reitzen- 
stein, p. 79). | 


170 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


surgence of chthonian theology an interesting movement 
took place in Greek religion which changed its whole 
subsequent outlook and character,1 and gave to it an 
eschatological direction which ultimately led to the facile 
acceptance of Oriental Mystery-cults.*. This was a demo- 
cratic movement in which the rustic deities of the populace 
increased while the Uranian and aristocratic gods decreased. 
From the earliest period of Greek religious history there are 
traces of the existence of the twofold worships of the 
Olympians, or deities of the sky, and of the chthonian or 
katachthonian deities of the earth and underworld. But 
the origins of the chthonic cults and the steps by which they 
attained distinctive prominence in the history of a people 
like the Greeks, who were freer from superstition and stood 
less in awe of the supernatural than their neighbours, are 
hidden from us. Somewhat parallel phenomena are found 
in the religious revolution by which the Eastern cults adopted 
by the people were forced upon the Roman government from 
the Second Punic War, in the coming to the surface of 
popular methods of consulting or utilizing the supernatural, 
and in the spread and persistence of the gloomy faith in the 
Manes and Lemures in Roman religion. 

In the Minoan-Mycenaean civilization, which the invading 
Aryans from the North confronted, there obtained the con- 
ception of a great Mother, or Earth-goddess,' with whom was 
associated a lesser male deity, representative of the power 
of reproduction, which deserved prime attention in the primi- 
tive struggle for existence. The Earth was so intimately 
connected with the life and death of its inhabitants that 
Earth-cults were inevitable, the goddess and the satellite 
being variously represented in each local cult. Further, when 
the problem of death presented itself, the dead were con- 


1 Cf. Dieterich, KJ. Sch. p. 437; Moore, Hist. of Religions, I, p. 432: 
“‘ In the great social revolutions of the subsequent centuries these gods and 
cults came into prominence; they gave & distinctive character to the 
later religion of Greece.”’ 

2 Cf. Kennedy, Vital Forces of the Early Church, p. 86. 

3 Farnell, Outline Hist. of Gk. Religion, p. 34; Harrison, Prol. p. 8 tf 

* Cf. on Earth-mother cults Dieterich, Archiv f Relig. ’o4, p. 10 ff. 


RESURGENCE OF CHTHONIC IDEAS 171 


ceived as returning to the domain of the Chthonians,or Earth- 
spirits, who therefore required tendance or worship from the 
living, that they might be found to be Theot Meilichior 
(propitious deities) in the underworld. This Earth-mother 
cult was accepted by the conquering Hellenes, and, as 
Demeter, was held in the greatest honour beside the more 
aristocratic worship of the Olympians. No god was held 
in greater repute throughout Greece than Dionysus, of purely 
chthonic origin. Throughout the centuries of the disintegra- 
tion of the Olympian religion the secret and mysterious 
chthonic cults gained in influence, and survived the classic 
faith. Indeed, from the fifth century B.c. the history of 
Greek religion is largely that of the victory of the Chthonians 
over the Olympians, especially by means of Mysteries. 
The Chthonians were gradually defined by the giving of 
names. The most universal was Demeter, ‘ Earth-mother,’ 
an invader from the North, who with her daughter Perse- 
phone attained an ecumenical authority.1 Beside these 
appear Zeus Chthonios or Trophonios, and Hades or Pluto, 
and Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft. 

These chthonic cults differed from the Olympian or Uranian 
cults in several particulars which it is important to note in 
relation to the spread of the Mysteries. (1) They were 
secret or close cults, restricted to a family, a tribe, or a 
locality, the rites of which would suffer profanation and 
lose efficacy by disclosure to outsiders. People refrained 
from speaking of them, and this secrecy enhanced their 
prestige by that strange religious phenomenon by which 
“the irrational and the horrible have in fact a fascination 
of their own, and it has often been noted that the rites of 
uncivilized peoples, in proportion to their strangeness, seem 
to more cultivated neighbours to embody a mysterious 
wisdom or a peculiarly efficacious magic.’’* (2) Hence 


1 Rohde, Psyche, I, p. 211: “‘ Der Glanz u. die weite u. dichte Verbreitung 
ihres Cultes tiber alle griechischen Stadte des Mutterlandes u; der Cclonien 
beweist mehr als irgend etwas Anderes, dass seit homerischer Zeit eine 
Wandlung auf dem Gebiete des religidsen Gefiihls u. des Gottesdienstes 
vorgegangen sein miss ”’ * Moore, I, p. 441 


172 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


arose the necessity of a solemn initiation which marked off 
the religious from the irreligious. This lent a significance to 
sacramental acts which has reacted strongly on subsequent 
theologies, pagan and Christian. (3) They were local cults 
each one originally with its own shrine and geographical 
boundaries. According to circumstances—the successes 
of the worshippers, trading facilities, accessibility, the repu- 
tation of the local tutelar—some grew in prominence while 
others declined. Thus the Eleusinia, originally merely a 
local agrarian cult, became under Athenian suzerainty an 
Attic cult, which developed into a pan-Hellenic Church, and 
finally an ecumenical religious centre— a common sanctuary 
of the whole world.’! In the same fashion the local earth- 
daemon, Aesculapius, extended his sway until under the 
empire his temples were among the most august and most 
frequented. Only less famous became the Mysteries of 
Andania in Messenia. (4) The deities of the chthonic cults 
had a twofold function,? agrarian and eschatological. The 
Chthonians granted fertility of the earth on which depended 
the life of men and their cattle, and so were givers of 
life. Their baneful powers are attested in the Hymn to 
Demeter, in which Demeter is represented as_ taking 
vengeance on gods and men by sending famine by which 
Zeus was finally forced to recall Persephone from the under- 
world. But the Chthonians, who were likewise Katach- 
thonian (Nether-world gods), received back again to their 
abodes the souls of the dead who became Demetreioi* 
(‘ belonging to Demeter ’) or Chthoniot. (5) The Chthonians 
were gods of gloom contrasted with the splendid Olympian 
deities. This was recognized in the distinction observed in 
sacrifices to the gods of the Upper and those of the Lower 
World. To the former was raised a high altar on which was 
burned the god’s portion of the sacrifice ; the victim devoted 
to the powers whose habitat was air or sky was lifted off the 
ground, his head turned towards heaven, and in this posture 
2 Aristides, Eleus. (Dindorf, p. 415). 


* Cf. Rohde, I, p. 205. 
3 Plutarch, De Facie in Orbe Lunae, 28. 


CHTHONIAN AND OLYMPIAN WORSHIPS _ 173 


re) 


his throat was cut. To the nether deities the victim’s 
throat was cut with the head earthwards over a hole which 
received the blood, after which the whole victim, a devoted 
holocaust, was burned as piacular on a low altar or mound 
of earth. The formulary of the Olympian ritual was 
do ut des, that of the Chthonic do ut abeas.1 Further, these 
gloomy divinities were most frequently addressed under 
conciliatory euphemisms as ‘gracious gods’ (Meilichiot). 
Zeus Chthonios is ‘Zeus of good counsel’ (Eubouleus, 
Bouleus), or Klymenos. Persephone is ‘holy one’ and 
“mistress ’; even dread Hecate is ‘most lovely one,’ and 
the Erinys become Eumenides. It was also in connexion 
with the Chthonians that the cult of the dead arose.? To 
chthonic practices and theories we may also probably 
relate the demonology, magic, and necromancy which were 
in vogue during the sway of the Mysteries. (6) Lastly, while 
literature has much to tell us about the Olympian gods, it 
maintains a baffling silence respecting the Chthonians, who 
were rescued from oblivion by the tenacity of the popular 
faith. Thus once more the lower orders asserted them- 
selves and through them practices which were once a 
despised and obscure superstitio took on the character of a 
respectable and catholic religio acknowledged by the 
adherents of the Mystery-cults and in some forms by the 
early Christians. 

Further, the dark ritual of the Chthonians formed the 
model for the Greek ritual of the dead. The surprising 
emergence of these chthonic cults was not the least im- 
portant education of the Greek world for the Mysteries 
and for sacramental religion. Antigone’s emphatic declara- 
tion’—so unlike the Hellenic religion—about the burial of her 
brother, ‘since there is a longer period during which I 
must please the nether divinities than those here, for there 
I shall always be,’ reflects the conviction of Sophocles’ day 
and is rooted in a religious sentiment which could find 
satisfaction only in the Mystery-Religions. 


1 Harrison, 7b. p. 7. #* Ibid. 215; Farnell, Gk. Hero Cults, p. 343 ff. 
3 Soph. Antigone, 74 f. 


174 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


The chthonic cults of the Greek world, or the most vigorous 
of them, were transformed into Mystery-churches! by the 
coming of the Dionysiac religion, the influence of the 
Orphic revival, and by contact with the Oriental cults which 
had more faithfully preserved the primitive autochthonic 
elements of religion. Thus the chthonic cults, while 
retaining telluric associations, assumed a more mystic and 
eschatological character. From Dionysos they acquired 
enthusiasm and ecstasy ; from Orphism their initiations 
derived sacramental grace and cathartic efficacy for both 
here and hereafter, and from the Orient they received that 
accession of prestige and venerable antiquity by which the 
popular religion came to the front. The progress of the 
Chthonians is most obvious in the Eleusinian mysteries. 
Dionysos was identified with Hades and from about the 
sixth century B.c. occupies a place of honour with Demeter 
and Persephone as son of the former goddess by a miracu- 
lous birth. As Dionysos-Zagreus he was further identified 
with the infant god Iacchos. The Orphics provided a 
theology for the Eleusinian rites whereby the initiate, purged 
from all sin, was brought into mystic reunion with the deity, 
and delivered from the terrible lot awaiting those who had 
neglected the sacraments. The Hymn to Demeter is a 
valuable document enabling us to form some idea of the way 
in which, even prior to the introduction of Dionysos, the 
local secret society of Eleusis was assuming the character of 
a Mystery-church whose sacraments secured a happy lot 
beyond death. 


1 “ L’adoration des divinités chthoniennes et productrices est le fond de 
tous les mystéres grecs et en particulier de ceux d’Eleusis ’’ (Lenormant and 
Pottier, Eleusinia in Daremberg-Saglio, Dict. II, p. 544). 


CHAPTER V 


THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS (continued) 


Les grands mouvements d’idées sont généralement précédés d’une 
période obscure ou, a l’insu de tous, ils se préparent. L’esprit nouveau 
est en gestation. Ilse manifeste par des symptémes que l’on ne comprendra 
que plus tard, a la lumiére des événements. L’dame des temps imminents 
semble s’essayer d’abord en des ébauches quiavortent. Puis, tout a coup, 
c’est l’explosion—E. pE FAYE, Gnostiques et Gnosticisme, p. 451. 


B. RELIGIOUS NEEDS OF THE AGE AND THEIR SYMPTOMS 


IN enquiring into the success of the Mystery-Religions (as 
into their ultimate failure) it is difficult to disentangle cause 
and effect, and to discriminate between favourable circum- 
stances and the positive principles to which they owed their 
success. The difficulty is further increased because of two 
tendencies which come to view in a study of the history of the 
Mystery-cults: first, their marvellous power of adaptation 
to the varying conditions and ideas of different generations, 
so that it is impossible to determine in some particulars 
whether they led the way or only followed in the van; and, 
secondly, their penchant for seeking alliances which enhanced 
their popularity. 

The rapid spread of the Mystery-Religions constitutes an 
historical phenomenon for which there must have been an 
adequate cause. Many reasons have been assigned to account 
for this phenomenon. Anrich? gives the following : (1) the 
Mysteries possessed the authority of a venerable and im- 
memorial antiquity: in religion vetustas adoranda est; 
(2) their symbolism and vagueness, in which votaries might 
apprehend the deepest religious truths ; (3) they satisfied 
the yearning for union with the deity ; (4) their response to 
the sense of sin and their sacramental cathartic ; (5) promise 
of a blessed immortality. 

1. PY 39 ff, 
175 


176 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


An investigator like Sir Samuel Dill, as sympathetic as 
thorough, would discover the special power of Orphism in 
its rites of cleansing, its assurance of immortality and its 
system of mediators and divine helpers;! the attraction of 
the religion of the Great Mother in the appeal of the dying 
and resurrected god, the solemn sacrament of the taurobolium, 
and in the figure of the great goddess as the universal 
mother, full of tenderness and grace, and giving peace 
through her cleansing rites.2. In regard to the success of the 
Isiac cult, he indicates its power in the appeal to the many 
orders of intellect, the sense of atonement, the “‘ impres- 
sive ritual, the separation of the clergy from the world, 
and in the comradeship of the guilds,’ the assurance of 
immortality, and the tenderness of Isis. The fascination 
of Mithraism lay “‘ partly in its ritual and clerical organiza- 
tion, still more in its clear promise of a life beyond the 
grave.’’* Cumont has accounted for their superiority : 


“ These religions gave greater satisfaction first of all 
to the senses and emotions, in the second place to the 
intelligence, and finally and chiefly to the conscience. 
They offered, in comparison with previous religions, more 
beauty in their ritual, more truth in their doctrines, and a 
superior good in their morality.’ 


To a proper understanding of the success of the 
Mystery-Religions a knowledge of the religious miliew in 
which they were planted and of their environment is 
essential. If we would account for the appeal they made 
to the Graeco-Roman world we must know the religious 
needs of that world. They succeeded in so far as they 


1 Pp. 427, 516. 2 Ib. pp. 554-9. 3 Ib. pp. 569-83. 

4 Ib. 597. Cf. Canon Bigg’s words on the Isiac legend: ‘“‘ What elements 
of beauty does it enclose! Here we have a divine humanity, a god who 
suffers a cruel death out of love for man, and a divinely human wife and 
mother, Isis the compassionate and merciful, who loves her husband with 
a love stronger than death, yet sets his murderer free, bidding him go and 
sin no more. Many a stricken spirit found comfort in the adoration of 
Isis’’ (Church’s Task, p. 45). 

5 Relig. Or. 2nd ed. pp. 43, 67-8 (Eng. tr. pp. 28, 44); Glover, Progress, 
pp. 265 ff., 323. 


INDIVIDUALISM 177 


were capable of adaptation to the religious sentiment of a 
particular period, and consequently the characteristic 
expressions of that religious sentiment are of supreme 
importance. The Mystery-Religions were the seed, the 
Graeco-Roman world the soil. Having examined the seed 
in enquiring into the nature of a Mystery, we purpose to 
examine the soil. 

The religious spirit sought expression in multifold ways 
according to every variety of religious experience and racial 
outlook. We can register only the most clamant religious 
needs and the most characteristic and general expressions 
of this ancient religious spirit relevant to the success of the 
Mystery-Religions and Christianity. 

I. Individualism. No feature in the life of the Graeco- 
Roman age is more conspicuous or more important for the 
history of the Mysteries and Christianity than the emphatic 
individualism which revealed itself in every department of 
ancient life in economics, politics, art, morality, and religion. 
Every aspect of the history of this ancient period is domi- 
nated by the presence of restless individualism, and the 
rebellion of the individual against the corporate body.} 

Individualism arose on the ruins of nationalism. The 
individual survives every catastrophe of history, rescues 
himself from the wreckage, and finds new bonds of social 
cohesion, weaker or stronger according to his tastes. The 
universal theory of ancient social life was that man was a 
citizen of a particular State, a member and the property of a 
particular clan, rather than a member of humanity. His 
first and almost whole duty was to seek the good of his 
tribe, or race, or nation, or city, and subordinate every indi- 
vidual interest to the collective welfare. The unit was the 
corporate body, not the individual. While the tribe or clan 
or church-nation or city-state maintained equilibrium the 
theory worked tolerably well, and proved a splendid discipline 


1 Cf. Kaerst, I, p. 78: ‘‘ So stehen die beiden grossen Grundmiachte des 
antiken Lebens, die Polis u. das Individuum, einander gegeniiber, nicht 
sich gegenseitig befructend u. vertiefend, sondern in einem immer 
tieferen, unvermittelten Gegensatz zu einander tretend,” 


13 


178 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


in training men to recognize that they are members one of 
another, and that without the community the individual 
cannot be made perfect. But this ancient collectivism 
was a phase of human history which must pass or at least 
undergo drastic modification because it was an imperfect 
and one-sided system. It embodied an important half-truth 
which our generation has taken up in its social outlook. 
The ancient system was doomed to fall because it educated 
and developed the citizen to be less dependent on the State, 
and because it did injustice to personal strivings and aspira- 
tions. Our period opens with the transition from the too 
exclusive collective ideal to the too exclusive individualistic 
ideal, and is marked throughout by an excessive individual- 
ism which acted as a corrective to the evils of the previous 
corporate regime, but itself engendered just as great evils, 
because it was as partial and extreme a theory as that which 
it suppressed. 

Individualism became ubiquitous both in the ancient 
Orient and in the more restless West. Oriental life had not 
been so severely collective as that of classic Greece and Rome. 
The Oriental bonds of cohesion were external and therefore 
weak—that despotism which was exterminated by Alex- 
ander the Great. The Orientals had never formed a truly 
political unity, understanding neither freedom nor self- 
government in the Western sense. They fought, not for 
laws which they had themselves made, nor for the freedom 
which was the spontaneous expression of their social life. 
The central restraining power, which but distantly influenced 
the individual, being weakened, each went his own way. 
The Orientals then found their chief activity in industrial 
and commercial life, and sought their satisfactions in 
individualistic religions which were divorced from national 
concerns and into the fellowship of which new members were 
admitted irrespective of race or social status. 

Nowhere is individualism so unexpected as among the 
Jews, who developed a tenacious social conscience such as 
no people of antiquity or of modern times has ever attained. 


1 Cf, Fairweather, Background, 2nd ed. p. 3o ff. 


INDIVIDUALISM AMONG THE JEWS 179 


The problem of individualism presented itself to Israel early, 
remained with her, sometimes acutely, throughout her 
history, especially in the problem of divine providence raised 
by the prosperity of the wicked and the oppression of the 
righteous, and in that of eschatology in attempting to 
reconcile the destiny of the pious individual with that of the 
messianic people—an antinomy which Jewish theology never 
quite superseded.1 

The problem of the individual was first thrust upon the 
attention of Jewish thinkers by the destruction of the Jewish 
State culminating in the Babylonian Captivity, and accen- 
tuated by reflection on the experiences of the Exile. The 
problem at first concerned individual retribution. Hitherto 
the holy nation had been the religious unit and in a less 
degree the family. But the question arose: was the 
humiliation of the Exile the result of their fathers’ unfaith- 
fulness or their own? In the former case, was it just that 
innocent descendants should bear the evil consequences of 
others’ sins? in the latter, was it just that the pious 
individual should be involved in the penalities of the sinful 
majority ? Jeremiah came forth to Israel with a message 
which proved epoch-making in her religious experience. He 
did not, like his great disciple Ezekiel, thrust the nation as 
the religious unit into the background, nor did he seriously 
attempt to reconcile the collective and the individual aspects 
of relation to God, but he set forth the rights of personal 
religion in a twofold fashion, first by proclaiming personal 
responsibility—‘ they shall say no more, The fathers have 
eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on 
edge. But every one shall die for his own iniquity ; every 
man that eateth the sour grapes, his teeth shall be set 
on edge’ (XXXI. 29-30), and ‘I try the heart, even 
to give every man according to his ways’ (XVII. 10); and, 
secondly, ‘‘ Jeremiah was the first to conceive religion as 
the communion of the individual soul with God” ?— 
most clearly expressed in the wonderful passage, XXXI. 
31-4, which has been without sufficient reason denied to 

1 Charles, pp. 363-4. 10: G1. 


18 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


Jeremiah. He prophesies a new covenant of grace and 
forgiveness, in which even the least shall know Jehovah, and 
in which religion will be an inward and therefore personal 
experience: ‘I will put My law in their inward parts, and 
in their heart will I write it.’ 

Ezekiel took up and developed one-sidedly Jeremiah’s 
message of a personal relation to God, by emphasizing with- 
out qualifications and without observation of all the facts 
of life Jeremiah’s doctrine of personal responsibility and 
God’s care for the individual. No prophet has ever given 
nobler expression to the worth of the individual soul before 
God than is found in chapter XVIII. 

The individualism of Jeremiah and Ezekiel had in. view 
only retribution and reward in this life. But the facts of 
human experience would not allow men to be satisfied with 
such a doctrine. It remained only too painfully patent that 
the righteous man, in spite of his personal relation to God 
and God’s care for him, was involved in the calamities of the 
wicked, and suffered from calamities of his own from which 
the godless seemed exempt. The scene of retribution had 
therefore to be shifted from earth and the date postponed. 
Job first gave expression to this yearning of the individual 
for a reward sometime consonant with his merits, and dimly 
adumbrated a future of personal immortality. In some of 
the Psalms, e.g. 49 and 73, the hope of personal immortality 
comes to expression. But the social consciousness of Israel 
could never be satisfied with a personal immortality like 
that of Greece,! and individual immortality gave way to a 
doctrine of Resurrection of the righteous Israel, which 
attempted to blend the social and the personal eschatologies. 
This doctrine gained the ascendancy because ‘‘ the common 
good was still more dear to the faithful in Israel than that 
of the individual; the Messianic kingdom was a more 
fundamental article of their faith than that of a blessed 
future life to the individual.’’* But the doctrine of a 

1 Charles, p. 80 n: 1, 155, describes Plato’s doctrine as “‘ the glorification 


of an unbridled individualism.’’ 
IM OR G fo 


IN LATER JUDAISM 181 


Resurrection never wholly ousted that of personal immor- 
tality, the latter asserting itself in the Judaeo-Alexandrine 
literature under Greek influence. Charles maintains that this 
synthesis of the personal and the collective eschatologies 
in a doctrine of Resurrection maintained itself only 
throughout the third and second centuries B.c. and 
that in the apocalyptic and apocryphal writers of the first 
century B.c. “the belief in a personal immortality has 
thus dissociated itself from the doctrine of the Messianic 
Kingdom.” Thus the synthesis of the two eschatologies 
achieved two centuries earlier is anew resolved into its 
elements, never again, save once (1 Enoch 37-70), to be 
Spiritually fused together within the sphere of Judaism. 
Their true and final synthesis became the task and achieve- 
ment of Christianity 1; Judaism perished in the attempt to 
translate theocratic conceptions into terms of personal 
religion. 

Throughout the Wisdom Literature there is ample 
expression of individualism. This is due partly to its uni- 
versalism, which treats life in its general aspects, in which 
all men are on equality. In spite of the writers’ attachment 
to Jewish institutions and their fundamental dogma that the 
knowledge of Yahwe and acquaintance with the Law are the 
beginning of Wisdom, the nationalist outlook has given 
way to the universal and human. The writers are generally 
as detached from the nationalistic as the contemporary and 
subsequent apocalyptic literature is attached to it. Hence 
this literature is characterized by an ethic which is at once 
individualistic and cosmopolitan. It is a partial reply to 
the problems of individualism which had arisen out of the 
previous experience of Israel, and deals with the summum 
bonum of the individual life. 

It was in the Greek world that individualism first assumed 
a menacing form. This solvent of society entered Greek life 
in the fifth century, disintegrated it in the fourth, infected 
the Romans in the third and second centuries, and through 
its action in Roman life contributed to the establishment 

1 Charles, p. 249; cf. also pp. 299, 362 f. 


y82 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


of the empire. The Sophists are credited with having first 
inoculated Greek life with the germs of individualism ; in 
reality the germs were only nurtured by them. By 
questioning the authority of the polis, enquiring into the 
validity of law, pointing out that what was law at Megara 
might be unlawful at Athens, by rejecting tradition, by 
contrasting natural with conventional right, by asserting 
the subjectivity and relativity of all truth in the words 
of Protagoras, ‘man is the measure of all things,’ they 
threatened to reduce society to atoms. Socrates saw the 
menace and stepped forward to save and reform the city- 
state. But he indirectly undermined its authority by calling 
attention, like Jeremiah and Ezekiel, to the eternal value 
of the individual, and by finding the ultimate basis of 
moral action neither in the laws nor the religion of the State, 
nor in tradition, but in man’s own reason and consciousness. 
In the Athenian law-court he advocated the right of private 
judgment even against the State by reminding his judges 
that he must obey God rather than man. Plato made the 
last heroic attempt to stay the encroaching individualism and 
buttress the Polis. Aristotle would also fain preserve the 
polis modified to meet new conditions. The Minor Socratics 
and the post-Aristotelian schools took up the individualistic 
aspects of Socrates’ teaching, abandoning the #olitical. 
“Stoic apathy, Epicurean quietism, Academic ataraxia, 
have all in common the principle that they direct the moral 
activity from the outer upon the inner world, and seek the 
ethical ideal in the independence and release of the individual 
from all external conditions of life, in isolation from the 
community.”?+ All post-Aristotelian philosophy is marked 
by detachment from the requirements of the city-state and 
concentration on the practical concerns of life. 

In the West the progress of individualism kept pace with 
the decay of the city-state, but it would be difficult to say 
whether the fall of the polis, which first occurred in Greece, 
was an effect or a cause of individualism. Both statements 
would be equally true, since it was the passions of individuals 

1 Wendland, Hell.-rom. Kultur, p. 20. 


INDIVIDUALISM IN GREECE AND ROME _ 183 


that undermined the polis, while the fall of the polis, by 
releasing the citizen from all-absorbing demands, promoted 
the growth of individualism. The conflict of individual and 
polis dominates Greek history till the fall of the polis, Then 
the Greeks, unable to rise to any true sense of nationalism, 
became carriers of a new cosmopolitanism. Alexander’s 
personality and conquests gave a mighty impetus to the 
development of individualism by inaugurating a cosmo- 
politanism the necessary corollary of which was individual- 
ism. The eyes of the civilized world were also now directed 
to one individual, whose personality was such as to appear 
a superman, standing nearer to the divine than to humanity. 
This prominence of individuals and the dependence of the 
weal of mankind on them led to the practice of deification 
in the case of Alexander, the Diadochian kings, and finally 
of Roman emperors. The release of millions of bullion from 
Oriental coffers by Alexander caused a scramble by fortune- 
seekers in which the ablest came to the top, and gave rise to 
capitalism,’ which was hitherto scarcely known to the Greeks, 
and which was to work evil among the Romans. The cir- 
culation of this new coin and treasures of the East stimulated 
commerce, opened up new avenues to wealth, encouraged 
private greed, speculation, and individual enterprise. There 
were other indications of Greek individualism. The 
mercenaries long before Alexander’s day were a factor in 
Oriental campaigns. These soldiers of fortune were apostles 
of cosmopolitanism and individualism. The habit of 
emigration to better one’s lot became common among the 
Greeks ; they settled in the most distant Greek-Asiatic cities 
of Alexander’s foundation, in the great centres of trade along 
the Asiatic coast, and at the courts of Hellenistic princes, 
and later throughout the Roman Empire. The individual 
was now at home in the world wherever ambition was 
gratified. 

During the Second Punic War even the patriotic Roman 
was overtaken by individualism, which, if not introduced by 
Hellenism, was at least fostered by Greek culture. When the 


1 Cf. Wendland, p. 20. 2 Kaerst, I. 63. 


184 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


Greeks became Rome’s schoolmasters they were men 
without a country, or rather their country was the world ; 
their professors had left impoverished Greece to seek personal 
interests. The literature, and especially the philosophy, of 
Greece which came to Rome was strongly individualistic. 
In the second century B.c. Roman character underwent a 
strange transformation. The individual rebelled against a 
crushing patriotism. The spoils of conquest engendered 
selfishness in their division. The degeneration of parties 
into cliques led™by ambitious leaders, the gambling for 
office, the decay of the state religion and growth of Oriental 
cults, the multiplication of dictatorships, the sanguinary 
civil wars, the rise of the empire, were simply the products 
of unrestrained individualism. Henceforth the individual 
looked upon the State as a field to be exploited for his 
agerandizement. As in the Hellenistic age, so in the Roman, 
outstanding personalities arose whose crimes or merits placed 
them above the level of their fellow-men, and the welfare of 
mankind became more and more dependent upon one man, 
Everything contributed to the exaltation of the individual ; 
*“the constant wars, conquests, and revolutions threw the 
powerful man into ever greater prominence, and the poverty 
and distress of the Graeco-Roman world disposed the 
humbler folk to adore any leader who could and did procure 
them decent comfort and adequate bodily maintenance.”’ 1 

The Eastern campaigns of Rome greatly accelerated the 
development of individualism. New fields were opened for 
personal ambition. When Rome first entered on the con- 
quest of the East she could not boast of any thorough 
education or genuine civilization; she looked upon her 
conquests as legitimate objects of exploitation. Under the 
republic provincial governors indulged their greed upon 
the hapless lands and amassed immense fortunes, which were 
usually squandered in reckless luxury. Individuals vied 
with each other in costly display. Throughout the empire 
the capitalist class increased, and, in Italy especially, there 
arose landlords who with their retinue of slaves displaced the 

1 Fowler, Roman Ideas of Deity, pp. 102-3; Relig. Exper. pp. 266, 340. 


SOCIAL EFFECTS 185 


former peasant proprietors—Latifundia perdidere Italiam. 
There were numberless thousands of slaves with no national 
or political loyalties and thousands of once prosperous 
artisans and farmers pauperized by Roman wars of con- 
fiscation. Such individuals, resenting the injustices of society, 
pursued their personal interests. 

Individualism invaded every sphere of life and affected 
rich and poor, East and West, especially in the closing 
republic and early empire. It asserted itself in art, in 
literature, in politics and society, in morality and religion. 
Greek art in its glory dealt with the ideal and the universal, 
whereas Roman art was individualistic and realistic. Among 
the Romans portrait-busts (not idealistic) became fashion- 
able. ‘‘ This is the age [second century B.c.] in which we 
first hear of statues and portrait-busts of eminent men,” ! 
though Alexander the Great was said to be one of the first 
to have his likeness cut in stone. 

In society individualism took the form of selfishness and 
the cultivation of private interests. Cut loose from the 
civitas, men were not yet educated to the new functions of 
society. The empire was too large, the family too small : 
other intermediate fields in which our corporate and indi- 
vidual life meet were as yet little cultivated. Public life 
lost interest, and was abandoned to the demagogue or the 
aspirant to power. The domestic virtues and charities 
received more attention, which resulted in the emancipation 
of women and their prominence in this age. Social instincts 
found expression in the multiplication of guilds. The 
literature of the Hellenistic and Roman age is individualistic. 
The passion of love becomes more acute and modern as found, 
for example, in the erotic poetry of Theocritus or Catullus.* 
Roman literature, being only in its infancy when the tide 
of individualism began to sweep over East and West, is 
more individualistic than the Greek both in its subject- 
matter and in the strong sense of personality which marks 
Roman writers. Sellar* says of Roman poetry: ‘in no 


1 Fowler, Relig. Exper. p. 340. 2 Wendland, p. 19. 
3 Rom. Poets of the Repub. p. 16 f. 


186 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


other branch of ancient literature is so much prominence 
given to the enjoyment of nature, and the joys, sorrows, 
tastes, and pursuits of the individual.” The genius of 
Roman writers is personal and self-conscious, as compared 
with the self-forgetful and more impersonal Greek genius. 
The later Greek literature responds to the individual taste 
of the Romans, as e.g. Plutarch and Polybius. In historical 
writing the personality of the author comes out more 
strongly in his prefaces, excursus and attitude of judgment 
or commendation to his characters.1 The importance of 
individuals found expression in the rise of biography, which 
became fashionable in Greek and Latin, e.g. Plutarch’s 
familiar Lives, Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of the Philosophers, 
Philostratus’ Apollonius of Tyana, Sallust’s Jugurtha and 
Catiline, Tacitus’ Agricola, Cornelius Nepos’ Lives, and 
Suetonius’ Lives of the Roman Emperors. The writing of 
Memoirs, as by Ptolemy I, Aratus, Caesar, is a further 
attestation of individualism; in autobiography the Latin 
genius excelled and reached its zenith in Augustine’s Con- 
fessions and in the beautiful De Consolatione Philosophiae 
of Boethius. 

Much more evidence might be adduced to prove that 
individualism was one of the most marked features of this 
age and a factor which dominated all life and the whole 
religious outlook as collectivism had once done. Enough 
has been said to show how extensive was the preparation 
made for the Mystery-Religions and Christianity by 
individualism. It was a phase in the unfolding of the 
conception of personality to which Socrates had first called 
attention, and in doing so had revealed to man the riches 
of his spiritual being and needs for which he must find 
satisfaction. The individual became the unit, and the 
Mystery-Religions held out salvation for the individual soul. 
The Mysteries magnified the individual by treating him as 
a man irrespective of his political or social connexions and 
by endowing him with divine powers. In the religious 


1 Cf. Bruns, Die Personlichkeit in d. Geschichtschreibung der Alten ; 
Wendland, p. 22. 


RELIGIOUS SYNCRETISM 187 


fraternities of these cults, slave and master, artisan and 
capitalist, met as equals. Men had to pay for individualism 
in a greater sensitiveness to suffering and loss in which the 
Mysteries offered consolation and comfort. With the 
inward direction given to life arose a consciousness of sin 
and need of reconciliation, to meet which the Mysteries 
offered a cathartic and assured divine grace with the for- 
giveness of sins. 

II. Another force affecting all Graeco-Roman history 
and most active in religion was syncretism, or Theocrasia,} 
which was the inevitable concomitant of cosmopolitanism 
and individualism. ‘‘In the religious development of the 
Hellenistic period,’ says Kaerst,? ‘‘ there are chiefly two 
moments which illustrate for us the peculiar character of this 
development and at the same time explain its peculiar 
significance for the entire religious development of the later 
period of antiquity, . . . the cult of the Rulers and the 
religious Syncretism,” a statement which is even more 
applicable to the Roman era. All the pre-conditions for an 
all-round syncretism obtained in the Graeco-Roman world— 
the decline of constructive originality and the advent of 
criticism, the fall of the city-state and the correlative rise of 
universalism, the international policy of Alexander, the 
breaking up of national faiths and philosophies, the spread 
of the Koimé, the intermingling of diverse populations * 
at a high stage of culture, the success of Stoicism with its 
cosmopolis and unifying allegorical interpretation, the rise of 
the Roman Empire, Roman law, roads which joined together 
the ends of theearth, the passion for novelty in religious 
matters, the tolerance of paganism, the rise of proselytism, 
and the continuous convergence of East and West. 

Nor does this list exhaust the factors which rendered 
theocrasia inevitable. Intermarriage between members of 

1 Cf. Synkvetismus im Altertum (Relig. in Gesch. u. Geg. V. 1043 ff.) ; 
Kaerst, II, p. 246 ff.; Toutain, Cultes paiens, II, p. 241 ff.; Wendland, 


Hell.-vom. Kultur, pp. 77, 21 ff., 161 ff.; Dill, pp. 558, 581 ff 
fh URE RE 


8 Cf. H. Leclercq, Colonies d’Orientaux en Occident (in Cabrol-Leclereq, 
Dict.). 


188 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


different races and adherents of different religions had much 
the same results then as now. The historic festal 
scene of ‘the marriage of Europe and Asia’ at Susa on 
Alexander’s return from India was but the beginning of what 
subsequently became quite frequent. On that occasion 
Alexander himself married a second Oriental queen—Statira, 
and about a hundred of his officers married Asiatic brides 
of rank, and ten thousand of his soldiers followed their 
example.1 Timothy was the son of a Jewess by a Greek 
father (Acts XVI. 1). Intermarriages between Christians and 
pagans or Jews were frequent enough to cause trouble in 
Paul’s Gentile churches. The Roman legionaries, wherever 
stationed, probably married local women. A bilingual 
sepulchral inscription in Latin and Aramaic discovered at 
South Shields records the death of a young British woman, 
Regina, of the Catuvellaunian tribe, the young wife of a 
Palmyrene named Barates.? 

Migration, forced and voluntary, accelerated the inter- 
mixture of peoples which conduced to ¢heocrasia. Quite 
possibly one of the contributory causes of Greek migration 
was the prevalence of malaria on the Greek mainland. 
W.H. 5S. Jones* contends that before 430 B.c. malaria was 
either unknown or not dangerously prevalent in Greece, 
that it broke out as a severe epidemic during the Pelopon- 
nesian War, and in the absence of prophylactic measures it 
became henceforth endemic. 

Alexander’s campaigns gave the first powerful impetus 
to universal syncretism which confounded the nationality 
of gods as well as of men. The breaking up, as a result of 
his conquests, of the long-established and exclusive priestly 
colleges of the Euphrates Valley which drove hosts of priests 
out to earn their livelihood by trading their esoteric know- 
ledge westward, had consequences as far-reaching as the 


1 Arrian, Anab. 7 IV.; Plut. Alex. 70. 

2 ‘D. M. Regina. liberta. et. conjuge. Barates, Palmyrenus natione. 
Catuallauna. A. XXX.’ (Proc. Soc. Bib. Arch. ’78, p. 11 f.; Jour. of Rom. 
Studies, 12, pl. VII.). 

3 Malaria and Greek History, Manchester, ’o9. 


CATHOLICITY IN RELIGION 189 


capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, which drove 
Greek scholars westward to bring in the Renaissance in 
Europe. Alexander threw open the world to all. The period 
of racial exclusion was over ; no nation could live by and for 
itself and no system could maintain its integrity in competi- 
tion with other systems. Alexander’s unification of mankind 
and of culture led of necessity to mutual borrowing and 
lending and conduced to a unity of religion. He adopted 
the Persian policy of tolerance toward foreign religions. 
Restraining barriers were thrown down, so that diverse 
religious usages and cults subsisted side by side. In the world 
made new by him all movements became co-extensive and 
consequently coincident. His Graeco-Oriental cities were 
permanent centres for the amalgamation of culture and 
religion. Of these foundations the most successful in 
fulfilling Alexander’s policy of blending the nations was 
Alexandria, which remained for centuries the headquarters 
of syncretism. The Diadochian kingdoms promoted 
syncretism in their armies, their capitals, and their libraries. 
The Roman Empire completed the work commenced by 
Alexander, and in it syncretism reached its apogee in 
the third and fourth centuries A.D. 

The Greeks were specially gifted as missionaries of 
syncretism in the larger world opened up by the Mace- 
donians and the Romans. Intellectually curious and fond 
of innovations, living under a system in which all thought was 
free and never trammelled by clerical conservatism,: they 
were ready to examine the merits of whatever object of 
interest was presented to them. Innovations, chiefly in the 
way of mysticism, had been introduced into the Greek 
world in the sixth century B.c. and in the fifth Oriental cults 
began to penetrate Attica and grew in influence and numbers 
from the fourth century onwards. The Greeks always 
remembered that their older divinities, acclimatized among 
them and idealized in art, came from abroad—from the 
North. Greek mercenaries had brought back intelligence of 
foreign customs and religions ; the Greek cities of Ionia had 

1 Butcher, Aspects of Gk. Genius, p. 25. 


190 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


already been a gate-way into the life and the thought of the | 
East. With the fall of the city-state went a depreciation 
of its parochialism and institutions. The Romans were 
the greatest borrowers and most skilful adapters. Their 
syncretistic tendencies were accentuated by their Greek 
education and the influence of Greek literature. Into their 
pantheon they admitted Etruscan, Italian, Greek and 
Oriental deities. Between the Second Punic War and the 
rise of the empire Roman religion was completely hellenized 
in cult and in mythology1; the taste for Oriental cults 
developed, which finally drew the people away from 
Greek and Roman deities, though it left them Greek 
mythology. 
Polytheism was tolerant and hospitable to foreign deities : 
it never disputed the existence or reality of other deities, 
and the addition of a new member to the Pantheon 
was a matter of indifference. The Greeks had early 
adopted{a process of theocrasia*; from Greece theocrasia 
spread and became fashionable, resulting everywhere in 
theoxenia, or hospitality afforded to strange deities. The 
nationality of deities being lost and the walls of national 
pantheons thrown down, the deities must be identified or 
equated, or there must result a survival of the fittest*?; but 
Paganism preferred the conciliation principle. Mutual 
borrowings and co-ordinations resulted. The Romans took 
over wholesale the Greek pantheon by rebaptizing their own 
gods with Greek names. Deities with similar attributes or 
functions were regarded as identical, or, according to the 
monotheistic trend of the age, all deities of all peoples were 
regarded as but manifestations of the one supreme deity. 
Generally this was accomplished by means of what Max 
Miiller designated henotheism, i.e. by the selection of a 
supreme deity in a pantheon to which the others were but 
satellites. This facilitated the identification of the chief 
deities of different nations as representing one supreme unity. 
Obsolete or unsuccessful gods were relegated to oblivion or 


1 Wissowa, p. 54 ff.; Aust, p, 106. 2 Legge, I: 16. 
3 Kaerst, II. 250. 


TOLERANCE OF PAGANISM IgI 


reduced to the rank of daemones. A curious evidence of the 
consciousness of the unity of the divine is afforded by the 
amalgamation of different deities into a Oeds wdvOeos, or 
Qea mavOeos,1 which might be regarded either as an 
abstract conception or a new deity according to the fluidity 
of pagan theology. Usually one deity was chosen, pro- 
minent for his merits in the votary’s estimation, and the 
epithet pantheus, ‘ all-God,’ added to the personal name? 
as representative of the totality of the divine. Thus we 
find in Latin inscriptions Sevapis pantheus, Liber pantheus, 
Fortuna panthea. Sometimes, without specifying any 
representative deity, the whole pantheon was summarized 
in a deus pantheus.s| The more usual method was to select 
a deity and attach to the god, or goddess, all the names 
and attributes of other gods, a most conspicuous example 
of which is ‘Isis of the thousand names,’ who reveals 
herself as— 


‘Parent of nature, mistress of all the elements, the first- 
born of the ages . . . whom the Phrygians adore as the 
Pessinuntian Mother of the Gods, the Athenians as Minerva, 
the Cyprians as Venus, the Cretans as Dictynian Diana, the 
Sicilians as Proserpina, the Eleusinians as Demeter, others 
as Juno, or Bellona, others as Hecate or Rhamnusia, while the 
Egyptians and others honour me with my proper name of 
Queen Isis.’ 4 


With which should be compared a much longer and more 
inclusive list in an Invocation to Isis preserved in the 
Oxyrhynchus Papyri, vol. XI, no. 1380. 

Another method was to select a deity as embracing the 
totality of divinity, e.g. Isis is addressed as ‘una quae es 
omnia, dea Isis,’ and Attis as ‘Attis the Most High and 
Bond of the Universe,’* which recalls the Christological 
language of Colossians. 

_ Worshippers were most catholic in their tastes in giving 


+ Cf. Kaerst, II. 250: Gal tbetl L557 athe 
2 Wissowa, p. 82, n. 3. 4 Apul. Met, XI. 5. 
5 Kaibel, Epig. gr. 824,2: "Arre 0 bylorp Kx. cuvéxovre 7d wav. 


192 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


recognition to as many deities of diverse origin as they 
fancied. The emperor Alexander Severus honoured in his 
private chapel Orpheus, Abraham, Apollonius of Tyana, 
together with Christ.1 Ancient tombstones testify to this 
mingled devotion to deities of Greece and Rome and the 
Orient. Out of religious restlessness men pried into the 
secrets of all the cults. Apollonius of Tyana visited many 
temples and oracles within and without the Roman Empire. 
Apuleius sought initiation into several Mysteries. Plu- 
tarch’s Clea was an attendant on the Delphic Dionysus 
and an initiate of Isis.2 Tatian* in his search for the 
truth, sought initiation into several Mysteries. Praetextatus 
and his wife had taken the sacraments in various Mystery- 
Churches.‘ Even the priesthoods are not exclusive; the 
same individual might be a priest of the Phrygian and 
Persian cults as well as an official in the state cult. A 
priest of Isis might even be named Mithra or Iacchagogus.° 
Among the deities there was no jealousy ; several might be 
accommodated in one temple, or the deity to whom a temple 
was dedicated might admit lesser deities who had some 
hold on the affection of his votaries. In the Isium of 
Pompeii stood statues of Dionysus, Venus, and Priapus.° 
In a Mithraeum of Ostia Italian and Greek deities were 
admitted.’ 

The Jews, because of their wonderful power of adaptation, 
played no small part in the history of syncretism, in spite 
of their attempted exclusiveness behind the ‘fence of the 
Law.’ During the Exile their religion was for the first time 
affected to any considerable extent by syncretism—from 
Persian sources. But it was in the post-Alexandrian period 
that the Jews became most exposed to, and on the whole 
the most receptive of, foreign ideas, especially those of 
Hellenism. So subtle and powerful was the process of 


1 Lampridius, Alex. Severus, 29. 3 Ad Graeces, 29. 

Ae PhityDew saeriOs. 135. f CLEA Vig et 77 Os 
5 Apul. Met. XI, 22. 
® Mau. Pompei, p. 169; Lafaye, p. 190. 
? Taylor, Cults, p. 68 ff. 


THE DIASPORA AND SYNCRETISM 193 


hellenization from Alexander to Antiochus Epiphanes that 
the Jews of Palestine were in danger of becoming thoroughly 
hellenized. This danger was arrested by the madness of 
Antiochus, who, in his desire to achieve religious uniformity 
in his contest with Egypt, resolved to accelerate the helle- 
nizing process by wholesale compulsion which drove the Jews 
into rebellion. For a time they secured their independence, 
but could not entirely banish Greek culture. The Diaspora 
which produced Paul and Philo was always more liberal 
in its outlook than the homeland, and more exposed to 
the contagion of foreign ideas. It proved a potent factor 
in the philosophical and religious syncretism of the age. 
The Diaspora was the strongest bond between East and 
West, and the chief medium of intercommunication of 
ideas. The Jewish-Greek school of Alexandria, represented 
chiefly by Philo, made the first serious attempt to harmonize 
the religion of the East and the culture of the West. In the 
synagogues of the Diaspora, Greeks and Romans, Syrians 
and Persians and islanders of the archipelago were attracted ; 
there they learned to know each other and the people who 
were the intermediaries between East and West. The 
synagogues were fruitful seedplots of syncretism, as were 
the religious associations of Paganism. The God-fearers 
conveyed to the synagogue the best ideals of Paganism 
and to the non-Jewish world the ideals of righteousness. 
In this intercourse the Greek version of the Seventy was an 
important syncretistic instrument. 

This syncretism worked hand in hand with the Mysteries, 
which, freed from all racial and cultural exclusiveness, offered 
their blessings to all. By disposing men to seek truth wher- 
ever found and religious support wherever offered, it made 
the path into foreign religions easy. By fostering the 
religious tendency to monotheism, it convinced men that all 
cults brought men into relationship with the same divine 
unity, so that a man would choose that cult which facilitated 
his approach to God. All the Mystery-Religions were deeply 
affected by syncretism, and indeed afford the best field for 
the study of syncretism. They formed as it were a religious 

14 


194 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


‘trust ’ by which they assisted each other. They borrowed 
in cult, ritual, symbols and mythology. The taurobolium, 
the outstanding sacrament of the Great Mother, was 
(probably) taken over by the Phrygian priests from the 
Persian worship of Anahita of Cappadocia, a goddess 
associated with Mithra in the religion of the Achaemenidae, 
and had also been practised in the sanguinary cult of the 
Commagenian Ma.?_ From the religion of the Great Mother 
it was probably borrowed by the Mithraists, as maintained 
by, e.g., Reville, Dill, and Legge,? though contested by 
Cumont.? The influence of Judaism upon the cult of 
Sabazius is indisputable.‘ Cumont surmises that Judaism 
affected the cult of the Great Mother.’ The priesthoods of 
these Mysteries were quite catholic. The Mystery-Religions 
showed their tolerant spirit in the protection which one 
authoritatively established or popularized cult extended to 
a sister cult in its propaganda. The Great Mother went 
sponsor for other Oriental cults, which to the eyes of out- 
siders looked more or less similar because of certain general 
features, just as primitive Christianity grew up sub umbraculo 
veligionis licitae of Judaism. 

Three forms of Mystery-Religion were pre-eminently syn- 
cretistic—Orphism, Hermeticism and Gnosticism. Orphism 
introduced a levelling tendency in religious views which 
struck at the very roots of nationalism, and so prepared 
the way for the individualistic Oriental cults and made all 
religions of equal value to the true Orphic. Possessed of the 
knowledge of his own secret rites and fortified by his 
formulae, the Orphic found no difficulty in conforming out- 
wardly to any religion in vogue. Orphism bequeathed 
to later Gnosticism and Hermeticism the selective principle 
in religious matters : 


“It went a great way towards weaning the minds of men 


1 Cumont, R. or., 2nd ed. pp. 98 f., 333, n. 34; Toutain, II, pp. 84-8 ; 
Wissowa, p. 81; Boissier, I, p. 368. 

2 Reville, La Religion a Rome, p. 95 ff; Legge, II. 259; Dill, pp. 609, 556. 

® T. et M.1I, p. 334, 0.5; Mithvas (in Roscher, I, p. 3064). 

* Cf. Cumont, R. or. 2nd ed. p. 96 ff. 5 Ib. p. 98. 


SYNCRETISM AND CHRISTIANITY 195 


from the idea of separate gods for the different nations, and 
towards teaching them that all national and local deities 
were but different forms of one great Power. . . . By their 
readiness to identify him [Dionysus] alike with the chthonian 
god of Eleusis, and with all the foreign gods—Adonis, Attis, 
Sabazius, Osiris, . . . they showed how far they were willing 
to go in the path of syncretism ; and, but for the rise of 
Christianity and other religions, there can be little doubt 
but that the whole of the Graeco-Roman deities would 
continually have merged into Dionysus.”’ } 


The Hermetic religion is an amalgamation of Chaldaean, 
Egyptian and Greek religious, cosmological, and philosophic 
theories, in which the Egyptian and the Greek elements 
predominate. The Corpus Hermeticum reflects nearly every 
phase of religious ideas and practices obtaining in the Graeco- 
Roman era, ranging from the loftiest spirituality to vulgar 
magic. This syncretism * brought immense popularity to 
the Mysteries and pressed into their service many auxiliaries 
such as Magic, Demonology, Astralism, and Philosophy, 
notably in the case of Iamblichus and Proclus. Ifsyncretism 
attained its height in the alliances formed to oppose con- 
quering Christianity it should also be ranked historically 
as one of the greatest movements in the preparation for 
Christianity. By fostering religious interests, by antiquating 
exclusivism, by bringing religious systems into comparison 
and competition, by predisposing men to accept salvation 
wherever most effectively offered, by reopening the question 
of authority, by unfolding to the West Love as the secret 
of the East,? and to the East Will as the secret of the West, 
Graeco-Roman syncretism not only made ready the way of 
the Lord, but in a real sense assured the victory of His cause.‘ 

1 Legge, I, p. 145 f. 

* The attempt must be renounced to follow syncretism into the realms 
of Magic, Astrology, and Philosophy, the material for which is abundant. 

3 Cf. F. Anderson, Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, p. 6. 

4 “Die neue durch den Synkretismus aufgenommene Religiositat mit 
ihrer schwadrmerischen Innigkeit, gestattete eine vdllige Hingabe an 
Christus, ein Sichversenken in das Einzigartige seines Wesens, das schliess- 


lich seiner Religion zum Siege verhelfen musste’”’ (Relig. in Gesch. u. 
Gegenw. V, p. 1055). 


196 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


III. Of great moment for both ancient and modern reli- 
gious history was the universal and ever-increasing tendency 
in the Graeco-Roman world to form private brotherhoods ? 
or guilds of a more or less religious character. Such 
associations generally arose at first in the great sea-ports, 
like the Peiraeus, and in important island entrepdts, such 
as Rhodes, Delos, Thera, etc., where foreigners congregated 
to preserve their religion and render mutual assistance. 
The clientele consisted mostly of foreign-born, and the 
deities were those who chiefly attracted by their Mystery- 
cult,? or who, such as Aesculapius, were saviour and healing 
deities. Inscriptions of the imperial period testify to 
the ubiquitous existence of clubs formed by members of 
every craft that catered to the tastes of a luxurious age, 
guilds of fishermen, fullers, bakers, bargemen, wood-cutters, 
smiths, butchers, workers of the mint, of trades such as 
perfume vendors, wine-merchants, financiers, of ex-soldiers * 
and sailors, and of convivial idlers. These thiasoz, collegia, 
or sodalitates were in every town, sometimes several on the 
same street. 

In Greece and Rome private associations were of great 
antiquity, bearing the character of trade-guilds and cult- 
brotherhoods in one, for, as ancient life was constituted with- 
out a sharp cleavage between secular and sacred,‘ these 
associations cannot conveniently be classified as industrial 
and religious. An ancient chamber of commerce could 
equally well be a religious society. Thiasoi, Eranot, or 
orgeones were evidently in vogue in Attica as early as the 
beginning of the sixth century (594) B.c., since the legislation 
of Solon acknowledged and enforced their by-laws.’ From 


1 Cf. esp. Mommsen, De Collegiis ; Boissier, II, pp. 247-304; an excel- 
lent chap. ‘‘ The Colleges and Plebeian Life ’”’ in Dill, Rom. Soc.; art. 
Collegia, by J. P. Waltzing in Cabrol-Leclercq, Dict.; Foucart, Des associa- 
tions veligieuses. 

2 Kaerst, ib. 281. : 

8 Cf. A. Miller, Veteranvereine in d. rim. Kaisarzeit (N. Jahrb. f. d. 
as Alte BSI Oe r2) 267 4h.) 

4 Boissier, II, p. 247. 

5 jevons, Introd. 334; Foucart, pp. 49, 57. 


RELIGIOUS GUILDS 197 


the fourth century there is abundant inscriptional evidence 
of the spread of orgeones, which multiplies in the third century 
B.c. Throughout the Greek world—in Attica, in the islands 
of the Aegean and in the Seleucid and Attalid territories— 
religious guilds existed devoted to the cults of the Great 
Mother, Isis, Attis, Serapis, Sabazios, etc. 

Private unions, semi-industrial, semi-religious, belong to 
a primitive stage of Roman history, some being carried back 
to the foundation of the city and the days of Numa.! For 
long they multiplied without being molested by the govern- 
ment, which only intervened to prevent excesses in the 
interests of social order. An impetus was given to the 
formation of religious clubs by the introduction of Cybele. 
Livy records the prominence of clubs of Bacchus-worshippers 
early in the second century B.c. By the days of Sulla (first 
quarter of first century B.c.) collegia of the Egyptian gods are 
in existence in Italy. In this century such guilds become so 
conspicuous as to arouse the suspicions of the Senate, which 
endeavoured to suppress the most dangerous in 64 B.C. 
About the middle of the first century B.c. these clubs had 
proved themselves so influential with the populace that 
ambitious aspirants, such as Clodius,* conceived the idea of 
forming collegia, sodalitia, or compitalia for political purposes. 
This abuse of religious associations caused them to fall 
deservedly under the suspicion of the emperors. For 
two centuries and a half (from the days of Julius Caesar 
to the reign of Alexander Severus) imperial legislation aimed 
at the suppression, and, where this was impossible, at the 
regulation of collegia, and subsequent to Alexander Severus 
the right of private association was zealously guarded.’ 
Caesar and Augustus forbad private associations except those 
of high antiquity or of a specifically religious character. 
Pliny, during his governorship of Bithynia, about A.p. 112, 
requested authorization from Trajan for the establishment 


1 Plut. Numa, 17; cf. Boissier, II, 248. 

2 Mommsen, p. 76. 

3. Boissier, p. 249. 

4 Suet. Caes. 42; Octav. 32; Boissier, p 249. 


198 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


of a club of firemen at Nicomedia numbering 150, to which 
the answer of the far-seeing Trajan is characteristic: ‘ What- 
ever name they may call themselves, or for whatever motives 
they are established, they will be certain as soon as united 
to become a partisan association.’! Previously Pliny had 
been compelled, on arrival in Bithynia, to put into operation 
the law against right of private association.? The Roman 
legal code sternly punished illegal associations, and forbad 
or restricted the formation of new guilds. Caius asserted the 
unconstitutional nature of private clubs, though permitting 
those of the most necessary trades*; and Ulpian attached 
the severest penalties to the offence of illegal association.‘ 
Yet, in spite of legislation and penalties, this irresistible 
popular movement steadily advanced, so that the govern- 
ment had gradually to recognize the existence or formation 
of guilds of necessary crafts; before the middle of the 
second century A.D. the right to establish burial clubs was 
accorded by the Senate, a concession which facilitated the 
formation and registration of all kinds of clubs which could 
shelter themselves under the title of funerary clubs, and 
which legalized regular association and the levying of con- 
tributions. Under Marcus Aurelius another concession was 
won in the grant of the right to receive bequests. Finally, 
Alexander Severus accorded official recognition to all guilds 
of crafts and trades, and appointed patrons (defensores) 
of each. Soon after the middle of the third century legal 
right to accept and hold property was granted to another 
class of private association, the Christian Church. 

The intense craving for private association is evidenced 
by the survival of numberless inscriptions from every corner 
of the Graeco-Roman world, by the anxiety caused to the 
authorities for centuries and the gradual recognition wrung 
from them, the universal prevalence of clubs in spite of every 

1 Pliny, Ep. X. 43 and 97. 

4) Dig. Til; 4,1 > Boissier, II,,p. 250. 

Sigs Lilian thee oissiet. p. 250. 

4 Dig. XLVII. 22, 2; Boissier, p. 250. 


5 Lamprid. Alex. Sev. 33. ‘‘ Etait-ce,” asks Boissier, ‘un acte de 
faiblesse ou un calcul de politique ?”’ (II, p. 251). 


NEED OF FELLOWSHIP 199 


police precaution, by the testimony that every class of 
workmen and traders formed guilds, of which many of the 
aristocracy did not hesitate to become patrons or honorary 
members, or even ordinary members of associations in which 
foreigners and plebeians predominated. 

The prevalence of the spirit of association corresponded 
to some imperious human need indicated in Aristotle’s dictum 
that ‘ man is a political [social] creature.’ He cannot realize 
himself apart from society ; something in his nature calls for 
fellowship. The Greeks felt this need keenly, and, stimulated 
thereby, created the city-state, which proved of such historic 
value to the Mediterranean civilization. The Roman 
felt this need even more than the Greek.1 Nothing the 
Roman feared more than oblivion, and nothing he craved 
more than the kindly remembrance of his friends. Against 
the solitariness of death he requested, with deeply human 
pathos, the passer-by to stop to read his name and age and 
rank. If aman of means, he established an endowment for 
a guild of friends and their successors to memorialize him 
in common meals on the anniversary of his death,? or at 
stated intervals. But the city-state had disappeared, and 
man left to himself discovered the disadvantages of his 
newly won freedom, and paid the penalty of individualism. 
The social instinct survived the city-state which had cul- 
tivated and informed social instincts for centuries. Political 
disasters coming thick and fast, the crises of history falling 
with a crushing suddenness and weight, men felt the need 
of individual support. ‘‘ The empire, which had striven to 
prevent combination, really furnished the greatest incentive 
to combine. In face of that world-wide and all-powerful 
system, the individual subject felt ever more and more his 
loneliness and helplessness. The imperial power might be 
well-meaning and beneficent, but it was so terrible and 


1 Boissier II. 248: ‘‘ Le besoin de se réunir et de se fortifier en s’as- 
sociant était au moins aussi grand dans l’antiquité qu’aujourd’hui, et 
parmi les peuples anciens, les Romains sont peut-étre celu qui l’a le plus 
vivement éprouvé.” 

2 Cf. Les repas funébres (in Cabrol-Leclercq, fasc. III. coll. 775-9) 


200 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


levelling in the universal sweep of its forces that the isolated 
man seemed in its presence reduced to the insignificance 
of an insect or a grain of sand.’’1 The religion into 
which he had been born, and which had rendered its highest 
service as a social bond, having suffered in the fall of the 
ancien régime, the individual must seek a religion of his 
own. The ancestral gods being estranged and national 
cults being unavailing, he must seek other means of 
purification and atonement. 

The State had become too large for the self-realization of 
the individual and too unwieldy to those accustomed to the 
compact polis. There was another social unit which suggests 
itself to us—the family. But the family was too circum- 
scribed to engage the main energies of the social instinct.? 
Moreover, the family had not yet assumed the prime import- 
ance it occupies with us, partly because the city-state had 
overshadowed every other social form, and partly because 
the family had not become the school for public life, as with 
us, owing to the low position assigned to the woman in 
Greek social life. We do not forget that it was in the family 
that Roman piety survived longest, nor that the sweet 
sanctities of domestic life were by no means uncommon, 
as the pages of Pliny and Plutarch tell. 

The student of the Greek and Latin inscriptions may recall 
another form of social life which seems to have been particu- 
larly active in that age—the municipal life. The frequent 
mention of municipal elections and honours and decrees 
and acute rivalries should not blind us to the fact that this 
municipal life was but a pale reflection of the healthy and 
all-absorbing life of the city-state. In the self-government 
and mutual rivalries of the cities and townships the lords 
of the Graeco-Roman world found a safety-valve for political 
energy and social ambition. The Greek-Oriental cities of 
Asia and Egypt enjoyed a liberal measure of home-rule 


1 Dill, p. 256. 

2 Cf. Dill, p. 267: ‘‘ Probably no age, not even our own, ever felt a 
greater craving for some form of social life, wider than the family and 
narrower than the State.” 


MUNICIPAL LIFE AND RIVALRIES 201 


and spent their time in encouraging trade and manufacture, 
beautifying their streets and amusing the citizens. Their 
honours, though empty, satisfied local ambition. Their 
Boulé met with all ceremony as if there was no superior 
or imperial over-lordship. A surprising amount of local 
patriotism was fostered. Successful men made generous 
bequests to their native city to make it rank beside or above 
a neighbouring city. 

The Municipia, enjoying a liberal constitution, were the 
glory of the imperial period. Each was a replica of Rome. 
Each had paved roads, public baths, a theatre, even an 
amphitheatre, temples, law courts, and places of public 
assemblage and porticoes for loungers. The remains of 
Pompeii convey a vivid impression of the competitive eager 
life that pulsated there. A visit to Timgad will convince 
one that centuries elapsed after the fall of the Western Em- 
pire before Europe recovered to any degree the amenities 
of the life that had gone. But all this municipal life had 
much unreality in it. It owed its existence partly to the 
conservative instincts of the Romans in continuing 
institutions of proved historic or sentimental worth. It 
differed from the life of the normal city-state in that its 
independence was unreal, there being a supreme authority 
above it, and in that it could not, because of individualism; 
compel the citizen. 

There remained the other chief phase of social life which 
we know as the Church, or private and voluntary association 
for religious purposes. Industrial guilds had from the 
beginning borne a religious character in Greece and Rome. 
After Alexander the Orientals made great progress in 
multiplying private associations in the great entrepdts of 
the Mediterranean, into which members of all nations 
were admitted. A variety of objects could be served by 
banding together in clubs, and doubtless the motives which 
increased the membership were as varied as those which 
bring new members into the masonic brotherhood or into 
the Christian Church. Men clubbed together from purely 
human and social instincts, drawn by a sense of solitariness 


202 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


in a world that was too large for the individual, to protect 
their trade against undue competition or against fiscal greed, 
to find diversion from the monotony and relaxation from the 
toil of their daily lives, to benefit by such advantages as 
accrued from the fellowship, to worship a patron deity, to 
share in the common meal, to be assured of a resting-place 
in their club cemetery. The religious instinct was one of 
many, but the religious motives multiplied when the indi- 
vidual sought a sustaining religion for himself. The way 
for private religious associations had been prepared by a 
variety of coefficients \—the religious upheavals of the sixth 
century B.c., the spread of Judaism, migrations of Oriental 
merchants and slaves. The overthrow of the Delphic oracle 
early in the sixth century B.c. and its reconstruction as a 
spiritual power contributed to the formation of orgeones and 
thiasoi,? by means of which henceforth religious convictions 
were to be spread independently of political control. 
Orphism was the most potent solvent ever introduced 
into Greek religious life. Though its members never 
constituted themselves into an organized church, they 
formed collegia, or cult-associations,? characterized by a 
distinct theology of Orphic life, observing the cult of 
the state gods while undermining it. The Orphics sowed 
the seeds of distrust toward the national and hereditary 
principle in religion, and made the salvation of the individual 
soul of first importance. In this way Orphism had enormous 
influence upon the subsequent history of religion : by making 
religion a private and personal matter which led to voluntary 
association, by preaching a doctrine of divine grace, by 
requiring initiation in the interests of salvation, by concen- 
trating attention upon personal endeavour and holiness, by 
indifference to state religion, by destroying the nationality 


1 “ This transference of the social consciousness from a city or a state to 
a religious society was no new thing in the history of mankind” (Gardner, 
Eph. Gosp. p. 126). 

2 Gruppe, II, p. 1020. 

3 Per contra, Monceaux, art. Orpheus in Daremberg-Saglio, Dictionnaire ; 
Gruppe, II, p. 1031; Legge, I. 139 f; Rohde, II, p. 111; cf. Macchioro, 
Zagreus, p. 268. 


EXALTATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL 203 


of gods, by the tolerant syncretism of its theology which 
would identify all gods with its Dionysus, it did much to 
prepare men for that revolutionary change in the history of 
religion when men abandon a religion into which they are 
born as citizens and voluntarily associate themselves in 
religious congregations. For the past twenty-two centuries 
these voluntary religious associations have been the decisive 
factors in history. The way was opened for such religions 
as were universal and could at the same time satisfy the 
needs of the individual and win his loyalty so that he became 
a missionary for his faith. 

The Orientals, whose genius had never created a cohesive 
political unity, but only unwieldy and incoherent absolute 
empires, were more given to form private religious associa- 
tions. When such associations become prominent in the 
Greek and Roman world we invariably find they owed their 
inception to Eastern slaves, freedmen, merchants, and 
adventurers ; the majority of their members, originally 
probably all, bear foreign names, and these associations 
appear and are most numerous in sea-ports and trading 
centres, which attracted foreigners. In Greece, for example, 
they appear first in the harbour of the Peiraeus.1 These 
associations gradually attracted converts from the centres 
in which they operated, increased their prestige socially, 
and established the voluntary self-supporting principle in 
religion. The co-mingling of different races, the unification 
of mankind, and the religious syncretism gave an immense 
impetus to the formation of religious confraternities : ‘‘ We 
see for the first time in history bodies of men and women 
banded together, irrespective of nationality and social 
rank, for the purpose of religious observances, and religion 
becoming recognized as an affair of the individual rather 
than of the State, while each member of the association was 
directly interested inits extension.’ But these associations 
had found a footing in the West before the days of Alexander, 
and the Jews had during and subsequent to the Exile dis- 
covered a bond of unity in the worship maintained by the 

1 Foucart, p. 84 f. 2 Legge, I, p. 21. 


204 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


synagogues, which may be viewed as a conspicuous and 
successful species of religious confraternities.? 

From what has been said the importance of the principle 
of private association both for the spread of the Mysteries 
and for the religious history of mankind will be evident. As 
in all the affairs of men, there was a—sometimes incon- 
gruous—mingling of heaven and earth; the industrial clubs 
were not wholly secular, nor the religious clubs wholly sacred. 
Associations of craftsand trades met under religious auspices: 
they often assembled in a temple or were closely associated 
with a temple; they had their patron-deity and their 
sacrifices and holy days. The more religious clubs, on the 
other hand, had to do with mundane affairs in the collection 
and administration of funds, the provision of sacrifices, and 
payment of officials, the discipline of members, the furnishing 
of the common meals, and the rendering of assistance. 

The innumerable collegia, founded by workers and crafts- 
men throughout the empire, did the duties, partly of trades- 
unions, partly of freemasonry, partly of free churches, and 
partly of chambers of commerce. They afforded support 
to the individual, and gave him a sense of security through 
association with his brethren. They dignified labour, and 
gave to the toilers a sense of self-respect as servants of 
society.* 

The social value of these associations was very great in an 
age when individualism had triumphed over collectivism as 
affording a new bond of social cohesion and containing the 
germs of a new and better social order. They contributed 
toward the equality of the sexes in assigning to woman her 
rightful place. Both in pagan and in early Christian 
religious guilds women appear as the equals of men in 


1 Cf. Fairweather, Background, 2nd ed. p. 21 

2 “When the brotherhood, many of them of servile grade, met in full 
conclave, in the temple of their patron-deity, to pass a formal decree of 
thanks to a benefactor, and regale themselves with a modest repast, or 
when they passed through the streets and the forum with banners flying, 
and all the emblems of their guild, the meanest member felt himself 
lifted for a moment above the dim, hopeless obscurity of plebeian life’’ 
(Dill, p. 256). 8 Cf. Farnell, Cults, III, p. 155. 


SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS VALUE OF THE GUILDS 205 


worship, in administration and in cult, and their influence 
was for good. The members were ‘ brothers,’ a term which 
had acquired a religious sense before it appeared on the 
pages of our New Testament. The Mithraists were styled 
‘brothers’ and ‘soldiers,’ and had an officer called pater 
and pater patrum. Adherents of Jupiter Dolichenus are 
“most loving brothers’ (fratres carissimos).1 Others are 
“colleagues and participators in holy things’ (collegae et 
consacranet).2 These voluntary associations were a symptom 
and a cause of the passing away of the old order, and marked 
the beginning of new social values* and the rise of an 
elevating ideal that “‘a man’s a man for a’ that and a’ that.” 
The slave could meet his master with self-respect and the 
consciousness of being an equal. The poorest and humblest 
had a new outlook on life. Unity gave to the lower classes 
the power to confront the upper classes and finally to under- 
mine their exclusiveness. 

Equally far-reaching were the effects of this irresistible 
movement in religious matters. The cravings and needs 
of the individual, never catered for by the state religions, 
now found means of satisfaction. The principle was 
asserted that religion is an affair of the soul with God in a 
union voluntarily entered into by the individual rather than 
a mere accident of birth by which a man is furnished with a 
religion for the good of the community irrespective of his 
personal needs. No racial or national or class barriers could 
henceforth intervene between a man and the full exercise of 
that religion which appealed to hisnature. The rights of con- 
science in religion for which Socrates had died in the Athenian 


etd ta Vhs 400. 

2 Boissier, II, p. 269. 

8 Mithraism was essentially a religion of soldiers, and had little to offer 
to women: the wives of Mithraists attached themselves to the more 
feminine cults of the Great Mother and Isis. In early Christianity women 
were not chosen to the highest office, as was possible e.g. in the august 
Eleusinian Mysteries. Paul, though proclaiming that Christ has blotted 
out the distinction of Greek and barbarian, male and female, requires 
women to veil themselves in the church meetings, but rather for the sake 
of modesty than from a belief in their inferiority. He speaks also of man 
as the ‘ head ’ of the woman, as Christ is head of the Church. 


206 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


prison, and the privilege of private judgment, were granted 
and respected. In the development of individuality these 
confraternities proved a school for the evolution of person- 
ality. This religious individualism brought as its corollary 
universalism, and in this respect ee the way for 
world-religions. 

In parting with these ancient collegia we regretfully remark 
how no human institution, however beneficial to mankind, as 
these collegia indisputably were, can escape abuses or ensure 
against degeneration. In the first place, these ‘ colleges ’ 
sometimes exemplified the aberrations of mass psychology 
by encouraging mob-rule. Tacitus records how, in the days 
of Nero, an atrox caedes broke out, at a gladiatorial exhibi- 
tion in Pompeii between the Pompeians and the neighbouring 
Nucerians, in which the colleges were evidently implicated, 
since by the Senate collegia (que) quae contra leges constituerant 
dissoluta.: More serious disorders were caused in the reign 
of Aurelian by the guild of the workmen of the mint, which 
resulted in the massacre of 7,000 people. Moreover, these 
very guilds, which first vindicated for the lower orders their 
freedom and represented the dignity of labour, degenerated 
in the closing empire into a caste-system of hereditary trades * 
whereby guild-members were bound to their occupations 
from generation to generation. This stereotyping of the 
guilds restricted personal freedom and condemned thousands 
by the accident of birth to trades for which they had no 
taste. Hence the “ go-slow ”’ policy was sometimes resorted 
to. Even intermarriage among the guilds was forbidden by 
law. 

IV. A developing Sense of Sin. In the Hellenistic and 
Roman periods we hear distinctly and emphatically a note 
of sadness and human weakness that sounded only faintly 
and sporadically ‘ in the literature of the West during its 

1 Annales, XIV. 17. 2 Vopiscus, Aurel. 38 (Scriptores hist. Aug.). 

3 Cf, Dill, Rom. Soc. in the Last Cent. 2nd ed. p. 232 ff.: ‘‘ It was the 
principle of rural serfdom applied to social functions ’’ ; and Rom. Soc. fr- 
Nero, p. 254. 


4 Cf. Farnell, Higher Aspects, pp. 131-4; Glover, Progress, pp. 139, 169 ; 
B. A. G. Fuller, The Problem of Evil in Plotinus, p. 27 ff. 


SENSE OF SIN AND FAILURE 207 


classical prime. There is a brooding consciousness of failure, 
of the futility of human effort, of the load of human sin, the 
ineluctability of penalty, of gods estranged, and the need of 
reconciliation and purification. ‘‘ The Graeco-Roman world 
had reached a point from which Judaism had started. From 
generation to generation rose a louder wail over the frailty 
of human nature, the weakness of mortals, the natural sin- 
fulness of man, who can in no way please the gods, and on 
whom, therefore, the anger of the gods weighs heavy. The 
complaint raised by Hebrew conscience in the dawn of 
history becomes the evening invocation of Hellenic 
philosophy.” Self-sufficiency had given way to a mood of 
pessimism. Again the spirit of the East was conquering the 
spirit of the West, and succeeded in bringing it under a con- 
viction of sin,*? which turned men’s thoughts eastwards in 
search of cathartic sacraments. This painful discovery 
increased in intensity to the Western spiritual experience 
until it culminated in the contrition of Augustine’s Con- 
fessions. The self-sufficient Greek believed that he could 
of himself attain all that was implied in the ideal of manhood 
—“ Hellas, the nurse of man, complete as man.” The 
ceremonious Roman looked upon his religion as a contract 
with the supernatural powers, the terms of which he could 
perfectly fulfil. The disillusionment came. The too-care- 
less optimism gave way to a moral despair, a failure of nerve. 
Like many other psychological phenomena of the Graeco- 
Roman world, the emergence of this sense of sin is explained 
by efficient causes ; there had been a long period of prepara- 
tion, during which thought was turned inwards to plumb 
the deeps and mysteries of individuality. With individuality 
came personality, and with personality, conscience—a word 
which the Stoics coined and popularized. The reign of 
collectivism was at an end, but the emancipated indivi- 
dual discovered that he now stood alone, cast upon his 
own resources against the universe. The discomforts of 
contemporary subjectivity were felt as contrasted with an 


1 Hausrath, Aposiles, Eng. tr. I, p. 42. 
* Cf. Gardner, St. Paul, 23-4. 


208 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


era of more irresponsible objectivity.1. A great lacuna was 
caused in man’s life by the elimination of his once absorbing 
public activities. Leisure for the affairs of the private life 
was left to him, and this leisure was increased by the paternal 
imperial policy and the security of the pax Romana. The 
individual, then as now in quest of freedom, discovered a 
somewhat in himself that must be overcome, something that 
rendered the ideal difficult of achievement, that tinged the 
blithesomeness of a bye-gone epoch with sadness. In the 
isolation of individualism man discovered a rift within his 
nature. This subjectivity caused an analysis of character 
and motives which reveals itself partly in the rise of 
autobiography, but chiefly in the habit of self-examination, 
which became a regular requirement of the moralists of the 
age.2. The necessity of self-examination had been affirmed 
and self-examination practised by Socrates, who commenced 
a new era in human thought by diverting investigation from 
physics to morality, from the external world to man.’ It 
was also practised by the Pythagoreans and commended 
itself greatly to the Stoics. Sextius, a professor of Stoicism, 
encouraged it among his followers by example and precept, 
and one of his pupils diligently cultivated it : ‘ 


“Every day I plead my case before myself. When the 
light is extinguished, and my wife, who knows my habit, 
keeps silence, I examine the past day, go over and weigh all 
my deeds and words. I hide nothing, I omit nothing : -why 
should I hesitate to face my shortcomings when I can say, 
“Take care not to repeat them, and so I forgive you 
to-day ”’ ?’ 


Epictetus commends Socrates for maintaining that a life 
without self-examination is not a worthy life for man.° 


1 Cf. Bussell, School of Plato, p. 212 ff. 

2 Cf. C. Martha, Les Moralistes sous l’empive romain, p. 173 ff. 

% Cf. his words about Delphic inscription: ‘It seems absurd while ig- 
norant of that (self-knowledge] to investigate external things... . 
I investigate not these things, but myself’ (Phaedrus, 230 A). 

4 Seneca, De Iva, ITl. 36. 

S$ Epict. I. 26, 3; Il: 12, 4,5.Plato, Apol. 38 A: 


SELF-EXAMINATION 209 


Plutarch asks men to turn their analysis upon themselves. 
Marcus Aurelius, amid the burdens of imperial power and 
political anxieties, passed his life in searching introspection. 

From the sixth century B.c. there commenced a gradual 
religious transformation in the Western world which would 
ultimately cause it to accept the Eastern anthropology, based 
on the creaturely weakness and sinfulness of man. Orphism 
had by the sixth century B.c. taken root in Magna Graecia, 
the islands of the Levant, and in the Greek mainland. It 
proclaimed a purer mysticism, individualism, asceticism, 
a dogma of original sin, and cathartic doctrines. Orphism 
did not commence, but it certainly advanced, the education 
of the Greeks in the consciousness of sin and the need of 
reconciliation ; it offered rites of purification,! and promised 
forgiveness and salvation through initiation into its 
Mysteries. Sin was met by sacramental grace. By securing 
influence in the Eleusinian Mysteries Orphism modified the 
character of these Mysteries into a cathartic rite of sacra- 
mental efficacy for sin.? The rise of the Pythagorean move- 
ment in the sixth century and especially the break-up of the 
Pythagorean schools* in Magna Graecia at the beginning 
of the fifth century, and their adoption of the outstanding 
moral doctrines of the Orphics are events of prime importance 
in the education of the Mediterranean world in the con- 
sciousness of sin. As Orphism reformed the Dionysiac 
religion, Pythagoreanism revived and reformed Orphism and 
adapted it to the demands of the age. Asceticism with 
severe self-examination was even more rigorously enjoined 
by the Pythagoreans, who deepened the sense of sin in two 
ways: first, by emphasizing the metempsychosis of souls 
according to moral progress—a doctrine borrowed from the 
Orphics ; and, secondly, by popularizing the doctrine of moral 
retribution in a future life which radically altered the 

1 Pausanias, IX. 30. 12. 

2 “The mode in which the Mysteries were regarded by the Greeks in 
general materially altered after the introduction of the Orphic teaching, 
and this also can hardly be attributed to anything else than the direct 


influence of its professors”’ (Legge, I, p. 131 f.). 
* Cf. Legge, I. 122. 


I5 


21I0 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


character of the Homeric Hades. As an ethic-religious 
reform movement! it so closely allied itself with the 
preparatory and kindred Orphic movement that many of 
the Orphic hymns were attributed to Pythagoras and most 
of them could be used by Pythagoreans; but it excelled 
Orphism as a teaching force in popularizing its doctrines, 
and also in its better organization in cohesive brotherhoods. 

The religious spirit of Plato wrestled with the problem of 
evil rather than with sin in the religious sense. He recognized 
that something rendered the ideal tantalizingly afar off from 
man, but could not really diagnose the cause. He found 
the main obstacle in the body, which acted as a weight upon 
the soul, and in ignorance. He could not, with his Greek 
anthropology, convince himself that evil is seated in the will, 
much less that men are so misguided or wicked as to choose 
evil instead of good. Sin consisted in ignorance, for no 
man could fail to love and practise virtue when once he 
learned what it is. The doctrines of metempsychosis and 
transmigration of souls taken from Orphic-Pythagorean 
teachings show that he recognized the possibility of moral 
deterioration. In the strict system of penance exacted in 
the next life he recognized clearly the power of sin. Aris- 
totle contributed in at least two conspicuous ways to the 
evolution of the consciousness of sin. First, in his original 
and searching analysis of human nature in The Metaphysics * 
and Nicomachean Ethics—textbooks-to the present day—he 
started men in the path of scientific introspection which was 
certain sooner or later to discover in our being the presence 
of the psychic phenomenon known as consciousness of sin. 
Secondly, he took a step beyond his master in observing 
that men may be voluntarily wicked, choosing the lower 
instead of the higher when both are presented. Sin, for 
Aristotle, consists in either excess or defect, the missing of 


1 Zeller, Pre-Soc. Philt Eng, tr. I. 516. 

2 Sir Henry Jones, in Idealism as a Practical Creed, p. 15, speaks of Hegel’s 
Phaenomenology of Spirit as ‘“‘ a work which, with Aristotle’s Metaphystes, 
ranks as one of the most adventurous voyages ever made in the world 
of mind.” 


SENSITIVE CONSCIENCES 211 


the proper mean, righteousness being pecorys.! In later 
writers the question of Sin occupies an increasingly con- 
spicuous place. Philo’s examination of the powers of the 
soul called the attention of the Jewish-Greek world to the 
moral disease seated in the flesh which mars the vision of 
God, a doctrine in which he is at one with Paul].? Sin is 
innate in each by birth: ‘each of us is numerically two 
persons, an animal anda man.’* In Plotinus’ treatment of 
evil there appears a further aspect of the convergence of 
Eastern and Western thought in anthropology, though the 
treatment is surprisingly scant. Much attention was given 
to the problem in Stoicism, especially Roman Stoicism,' 
which viewed sin as a necessity in the nature of things as 
shadow to light, or as madness or ignorance, or even 
weakness, or as serving the purpose of revealing the good. 
Plutarch accounted for evil by assigning it to the demons. 
It was not from an isolated case of a burdened conscience 
that he had depicted the superstitious man wishing to suffer 
his punishment, sitting out of doors, wearing sackcloth or 
filthy rags, wallowing naked in the mire, making public 
confession of his sin.’ The parodies of hypersensitive 
consciences by the satirist of Samosata and by Theo- 
phrastus in his Superstitious Man would lose all force if 
they did not stand in a recognizable proportion to con- 
temporary views. Quite modern in Theophrastus’ essay is 
the expectation of the monthly absolution of sins from the 
Orphic salvationists. Epictetus’ dwells upon the fact 
that men do evil voluntarily, but under the persuasion 
that it is advantageous or that it bears the appearance of 
good: ‘ All the great and terrible deeds done among man- 
kind have no other cause than appearance ’—that is, the 


1 Cf Eth. Nic. VI. 9: 

2 Cf. Kennedy, Philo’s Contribution, p. 98 ff. 

3 Quod, det. pot. insid. sol, XXII. 

# Cf. B. A. G, Fuller, op. cit. chaps. III; IV; Inge, I, p. 131 #f., II, 
Dezoius 

5 Cf. Arnold, Roman Stoicism, p. 330 ff. 

§ De Superst., VII 12 

TOT 28. 2. 


212 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


objects appeared desirable. In another remarkable passage 4 
he says: ‘ Any sin implies a conflict ; or, since the sinner does 
not wish to sin but to do right, it is clear that he does not do 
what he desires ’—a sentiment parallel to the experience of 
Paul (Romans VII. 15). 

The worldly Horace gives expression to this inner conflict : 


‘Quae nocuere sequar, fugiam quae profore credam,’ 
and the licentious Ovid * in the familiar verses : 


‘Sed trahit invitam nova vis, aliudque cupido, 
Mens aliud suadet. Video meliora proboque, 
Deteriora sequor,’ 


The two pagan writers who are most conscious of the sin- 
fulness of man’s nature are Seneca and Virgil. The former 
recognizes the universality of sin, its downward tendency, 
and its infectious character. Thus*: 


‘Do we not perceive the need of some advocate to teach 
us differently from the pagan ideas? . . . No one sins to 
himself alone, but diffuses the madness upon those with whom 
he comes in contact, and in turn receives it himself again. 
And so the faults of all are in each because the mass has 
imparted them. While a man makes his neighbour worse 
he becomes worse himself. First, he learns what is base 
(deteriora) and then becomes a teacher of it. Hence, there 
results such immense wickedness (ingens tlla nequitia) 
because there is gathered in one the worst that is known to 
each one.’ 


Again,‘ he complains that we have all sinned and been 
affected with vice, that vices may change with the fashion, 
but will remain and even grow worse. The prevalence of 
wickedness and the deterioration of human affairs, which 
we lament, was lamented by our ancestors, and shall be 
lamented by our descendants. Vice is co-extensive with 
humanity ; when you see the forum crowded with people, 


ALG 2On Le 

2 Hor. Epist. I. 8, xi.; Ovid, Metam. VII. 18 ff. Cf. other interesting 
citations in Wetstein, Novum Test. ad Rom. VII. 15. 

5 Ep. XC. 52. 4 De Benef. I. 10 


SENECA AND VIRGIL ON SIN 213 


hoc scito, istic tantundem esse vitiorum quantum hominum.? 
Statements as to the prevalence of sin might be multiplied 
from the pages of Seneca.? 

Virgil, who has never been surpassed by any prophet in 
his tender, universal sympathy with the cravings and 
strivings of man, holds together in wonderful poise what 
might be called the Hebraic and the Hellenic anthropologies. 
His “ poetry throbbed with the sense of man’s grandeur 
and his sanctity,’ * while at the same time no spirit was 
more sensitive to man’s failures and none felt more oppres- 
sively the load of human guilt. His religious and mystic 
spirit imbibed from Orphism and Pythagoreanism the doc- 
trine of the perfectibility of human nature by the practice 
of virtue, together with that of a system of penances for the 
sinful and purgatorial experience for those who had soiled 
their souls with the things of sense. Like Goethe, he believed 


** Es irrt der Mensch so lang er strebt.”’ 


His hell is not so gloomy or hopeless as that of his great 
disciple, Dante, but to human wrong-doing there must be 
meted out a just penalty. ‘‘ What,’’ asks Professor Conway, 
“is the tremendous machinery of punishment after death 
which the Sixth Book describes in the most majestic passage 
of all epic poetry (Aen. VI. 548-627), but the measure of 
Virgil’s sense of human guilt ? ’ 

This growing sense of sin in the Graeco-Roman world was 
akin to the pessimism which, about the commencement of 
the Christian era, gave rise to the belief that history was a 
process of degeneration, that the times were out of joint, 
and that a saviour was needed to put the world right. The 
Jews alone in antiquity were conspicuous for an outlook 
which comes nearest to our modern view of an “ increasing 
purpose ”’ in world-history. The Jew was buoyed up with 
a religious optimism that “the best is yet to be.’’ The 
opposite view is often expressed in Greek and Roman 


t Delra, I1. 8, I. 

2 Cf. De Clem. 1.6; Ep. XXIX.; Nat. Quaest. III. 30. 
3 Glover, Conflict, p. 31. 

4 Virgil’s Mess. Eclogue, p. 37. 


214 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


writers. Thus, Seneca holds that after the destruction of the 
world by fire, the new race of men will lose their innocence.* 
Sin will increase in quality and quantity. In his Consolation 
to Marcia (XXIII) occur such expressions as ‘ omne futurum 
incertum est et ad deteriora certius’ and ‘ quicquid ad 
summum pervenit ab exitu prope est’ and ‘ Indicium 
imminentis exitii nimia maturitas est; adpetit finis ubi 
incrementa consumpta sunt.’ 


It is important to note that the Greeks, though less 
sensitive to the disharmony of sin than the Jews and the 
Romans (whom Sallust calls religiosissimi mortales), indicated 
to the Graeco-Roman world the three main directions in 
which the doctrine of sin developed and affected Christian 
theology: (1) What we may term the gnostic-philosophic 
view, of which Plato may be taken as representative and 
his ‘no one is willingly bad’* the watchword. Sin is 
ignorance and blindness to reality. Virtue is so attractive 
and rational that no one can look upon her without obeying 
her behests. Men are not such irrational beings as to choose 
what they know to be hurtful in their pursuit of the Ideal. 
The way of salvation lies, therefore, in enlightenment, the 
reception of the ‘holy light’ of divine Truth. Plato’s 
dualism gives to evil an illegitimate raison d@’étre as the neces- 
sary antagonism to the Good, with its seat in our fleshly 
nature. Hence ‘ our safety is to become like God as far as 
possible, and to become like Himis to become righteous and 
holy.’ ! The soul, like the charioteer in the Phaedrus,’ 
beholding ‘ the vision of Love,’ is guided by Reason above 
passion to the source of Love. 

(2) What we may term, somewhat inaccurately, the 
Orphic-mystic view, of which Plotinus may be representative 
in words which laid hold of Augustine,‘ ‘ we must fly to that 
dear, dear Fatherland ; there is the Father, there isall ... 
to be like God.’ Man isa creature fallen from a high estate, 


1 Nat. Quaest. III. 30. 4 Theaetetus, 176 A. 
* (Dei Benef; Ero, i, S253 Did 


3 Timaeus, 86 D. 6 D.C.D. 1X. 17; cf. Enn. 1. 6, 8. 


INTENSIFICATION OF CONVICTION OF SIN 215 


a wanderer or exile from the true Home of the soul. He is 
immersed in the world of sense, oblivious of, or painfully 
struggling towards, the spiritual world. Salvation will 
come by the revelation of the One, the Supreme Good, which 
the soul will gladly embrace in the flight of the ‘ Alone to 
the Alone.’ 

(3) The ethical view, represented by Aristotle, who first, 
in the seventh book of the Nicomachean Ethics, challenged 
Plato’s interpretation} of evil by affirming that men do act 
wickedly in the face of knowledge. ‘Sin is not a matter 
of knowledge,’ he says expressly ; ‘ Sin is wickedness,’ having 
to do with the will. It isiat once an intellectual and a moral 
act. Knowledge may be obscured by appetite. This view 
is also conspicuous in Philo. As a school the Stoics? 
are the best type of this ethical emphasis. 


Finally, it may be said that in the Graeco-Roman world 
the conviction of sin became intensified and the need of 
atonement more imperious in at least four respects : (1) The 
communal conception of sin, common to all primitive culture, 
retreated before that of personal guilt, thus making the 
question of salvation of immediate interest to each moral 
unit in his dislocation from corporate religion. (2) The 
scene of rewards and retribution was increasingly shifted from 
the visible sphere of earth—where punishments were some- 
times perplexingly inadequate and at others perplexingly 
unjust—to a future world where imagination could riot in 
inventing means of torture commensurate with the deeds 
done in the body. The future life, being a continuum of 
the present, intensified the flagrance of sin here, of which the 
Orphic tablets furnish an excellent example. (3) The 
ceremonial or taboo sin began to part company with the 
ethical sin. Intention and motive, independent of con- 
sequences, entered as a new factor. The unconscious sin, 
done with a good will or in ignorance, might, under the 


1 Cf. A. W. Mair, Sin (Greek), Hastings’ E.R.E. XI. 555. 
2 Cf. Kennedy, p. 102. 


% Glover, Progress, p. 18; Arnold, Rom. Stoicism, XIV 


216 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


Hebrew code or ancient Greek religion, entail death and 
defilement. But the cult word ‘ holy ’ was gradually charged 
with moral content in the passage from the ritualistic to 
the moral. (4) The means of reconciliation became corre- 
spondingly spiritual. Piacular sacrifices no longer sufficed. 
A change of mind was necessary, a repentance which would 
raise its Miserere Domine; the sinner must undergo a_ 
rebirth. Plato inveighed vehemently! against cheap 
remedies for sin. The cynic asked,’ ‘ Shall Pataikion, the 
highwayman, have a happier lot after death because of 
having taken the sacrament than Epaminondas ?’ Epicte- 
tus scoffs at the popular sacramentarian view of the vener- 
able Eleusinia apart from inward purity. Ovid‘ derides 
Greece for introducing cheap ritualistic means to peace of 
mind. Celsus’ statement, accepted by Origen,’ of the 
mystagogues’ proclamation at the Mysteries for cleansing 
from sin, ‘He who is pure from all stain, whose soul 
is conscious of no sin, and who has lived a good and 
upright life,’ shows how far the Mysteries had moved from 
the days when ‘Greek speech and clean hands’ admitted 
aspirants.‘ 

V. Asceticism. Inthe centuries preceding and subsequent 
to the Christian era there is a remarkable prevalence of 
ascetic tendencies and practices which seem quite strange 
to us who have learned from Christian philosophy that to the 
pure all things are pure and that all things are ours. In the 
Graeco-Roman world asceticism was as universal and as 
indifferent to race and creed and nationality as were the 
syncretistic and individualistic tendencies. It pervaded 
philosophy and religion. Like a mighty tide it swept on- 
wards, especially from the first century B.c., from the East 
over the West, gathering momentum as it forced its way into 
every serious view of life. Every great teacher from Plato 
to John the Baptist, from Paul to Plotinus, axiomatically 
accepted asceticism as an essential of and qualification for 

1 Cf, Repub. II. 364-5 D. 4 Fast, 11.135 f. 


2 Diog. Laert. VI. 39. ® C, Celsum, III. 59. 
® Diss. IIT. 27. * Cf. Farnell, Cults, III. 166. 


CAUSES OF ASCETICISM 217 


religious life. Only One rejected this method, and ‘ came 
eating and drinking.’ 

There were several factors operative in the origin and 
spread of asceticism. (1) Asceticism is another conspicuous 
example of the all-pervading influence of Oriental con- 
templation, another instance in which the resisting power of 
the West was overcome by the spirit of the East. Renuncia- 
tion for religious purposes was little in prominence to the 
more sober peoples of the West.!. The Greek, trusting to 
reason, aimed at self-culture rather than self-repression, and 
an equipoise of the moral faculties which could not admit 
the predominance of one faculty over another. Aristotle, 
with the possible exception of Sophocles the most typical 
Greek, made the golden mean the rule in ethics. To the 
genuinely Greek spirit of ‘nothing in excess’ asceticism 
was abhorrent as an extreme incongruous with ‘“ man 
complete as man.” Hellas could not in her classical prime 
admit a view of life which set limitations and restrictions 
upon human effort, which could not be justified to reason, 
nor be shown to be contrary to nature. The more sober 
Roman piety did not require asceticism in its discipline ; 
the world and the fulness thereof were the Roman’s. The 
people who could appropriate the sentiment of their poet 
Terence— 


‘Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto,’ 


were not, while left to themselves, likely to become a nation 
of ascetics. But the days came when Greece and Rome, in 
their political pride of place, looked down upon a prostrate 
Eastern world only to learn, victi victoribus leges dederunt. 
A voice from the mystic East rose even louder upon their 
ears bearing the sentiment— 


““Entbehren sollst du, sollst entbehren.”’ 


(2) Asceticism was the inevitable recoil from the excesses 


1 Asceticism was not absent even in the earliest periods of Greek and 
Roman religion, but occupied a minor place and lacked the later elaborate 
theological justification. Cf. J. W. Swain, Hellenic Origins of Christian 
A sceticism, p. 6 ff.; Cappelle, N. Jahrb. f. d. Klass. Alt, XXIII, p. 681 ff. 


218 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


of naturalistic religion to which the creed naturalia non 
sunt turpia conduced. In earlier non-moral stages the 
worshipper was not offended by any incongruity, and the 
religious sanction given to natural instincts degenerated 
into dangerous excess. When the reaction came it recoiled 
to the other extreme, which denied the right of way to what 
was natural and innocent in itself. Students of the history 
of human institutions and ethics are familiar with this 
phenomenon ; the pendulum swings to the other extreme. 
The reformers reasserted the right of private judgment 
with an emphasis which has made non-Roman churches 
conspicuous for their fissiparism. The Puritans failed be- 
cause they denied “‘ the uses of the flesh ’’ which the next 
age took up with a zest which degenerated into a cult of the 
flesh. The convert who abandoned the revolting excesses 
of paganism found no resting-place except in the excessive 
position of asceticism. A similar phenomenon is observable 
in the mediaeval world. The monastic life seemed the only 
alternative to that of the battle-field or dissoluteness. The 
liberty of our modern personal autonomy was hardly visible 
in the practical ethical sphere of antiquity. The mean had 
not been discovered between antinomianism and asceticism. 

(3) The most conspicuous cause of asceticism was the 
prevalent Graeco-Oriental Dualism which dominated all 
thought. ‘‘ Dualism, with the asceticism inseparable from 
it, was, so to speak, in the air ; it was the strongest spiritual 
tendency of the time, almost equal to Christianity in power.’’} 
Dualism was as much a postulate for philosophical and ethical 
and religious thinkers of the Graeco-Roman age as evolution 
or the unity of the universe is tous. The more seriously a 
man devoted himself to religious affairs, the more thoroughly 
he accepted dualism: witness the two most philosophic 
religious thinkers of our era, Philo and Plotinus. The 
fascination of the dualistic systems may be shown by the 
difficulty with which Paul escaped Greek dualism to adopt 
a view of flesh and spirit which is akin to Oriental dualism. 
We cannot touch Graeco-Roman life or thought at any point 

1 Dobschitz, Christian Life, Eng. tr. p. 112; cf. also p. 40 f. 


ANCIENT THOUGHT PERVADED BY DUALISM 21g 


without detecting the presence of dualism, to which 
asceticism is the necessary concomitant. Dualism was 
introduced into Greek thought by Anaxagoras,! who, in 
opposition to the preceding materialistic monism, segregated 
spirit and matter. With Plato it made its home in Greek 
thought, the course of which it distorted to the close of 
Greek philosophy in Plotinus, who made the last heroic 
effort to surmount it, confessed his failure, and pointed to 
the refuge of mysticism. Ethical dualism came in from 
the Orient—the dualism between two eternally hostile prin- 
ciples of Light and Darkness, Good and Evil, and made its 
alliance with the Greek metaphysical dualism. Asceticism 
is the ethical code which arises inevitably from a dualistic 
opposition between the spiritual and the natural. These 
are represented as absolutely irreconcilable and mutually 
antagonistic *; if a man is to escape the natural he must 
renounce the rights of his physical nature in the interests of 
his spiritual,’ forgetful of the moral value of the interrelation 
and interaction of these two elements which constitute a 
unity of personality. (4) The deepening consciousness 
of-sin, spoken of above, gave new impetus to asceticism in 
the absence of a moral via media. In the desire to surmount 
this oppressive consciousness and to escape from pol- 
lution the ancient devotee, a child of his age, could seek 
cleansing only in accordance with the contemporary rigorous 
and dualistic tendencies. The most flagrant sins of paganism 
were those of sensuality ; hence sin seemed to be identified 
with the flesh, which, as evil, must be mortified and to which 
no concessions must be made. The passions must be 
extirpated, not regulated. To save the soul, we must wholly 
escape from sense ; ‘ the body is a tomb of the soul’ wasa 
common watchword of ancient asceticism. The inadequate 
conception of sin and equally inadequate conception of 
personality exaggerated the practice of asceticism. The 
aim of the penitent was not to attain salvation of man’s 
1 Cf. Angus, Environment, pp. 176, 192 f. 


* Cf. Watson, Phil. Basis of Relig., p. 293. 
* Cf. Plato, Timaeus, 69 ff.; Phaedo, 66 ff.; Cratyl. 400 C. 


220 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


whole being, but of that portion which seemed of supreme 
worth. He endeavoured to act as if he were pure spirit and 
not a spirit in an animal body with physical cravings and 
wants for which there was ample justification. Only one gos- 
pel proclaimed : ‘ allare yours . . . the world, or life, or death, 
or the present, or the future ; all things belong to you, and 
you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.’ Men who 
for the sin of their soul were prepared to practise mortifica- 
tion of the body were naturally disposed to the Oriental 
religions—including Christianity, especially that primitive 
Christianity which, even with Paul, began to lose touch 
with the moral poise of Jesus’ own life, and to have re- 
course to asceticism, which expressed itself in the asperities 
of the Pannonian father* and in the absurdities of the 
anchorites Antony and Simeon Stylites. 

(5) The post-Aristotelian philosophy, which exercised a 
profound influence East and West, adopted asceticism as a 
means of moral reform in an age that was pre-eminently 
occupied with the problem of conduct, and when the com- 
bination of ethics with religion was proceeding apace. We are 
not thinking of Epicureanism nor of Scepticism, but of the 
religio-philosophic systems of Platonism, Stoicism, Judaeo- 
Greek philosophy, Neo-Pythagoreanism and Neo-Platonism. 
The moral earnestness of Stoicism encouraged the spirit of 
asceticism, as e.g. in Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. 
Seneca compares life to a severe struggle : omnia illi cum hac 
grave certamen est.) The Stoic doctrine of ‘the flesh’ or 
‘the body,’ found e.g. prominently in Seneca and Epictetus, 
could exist only with an ascetic ideal. Such morbid 
sentiments as ‘ this body is but a weight and punishment of 
the soul,’* inutilis caro et fluida, receptandis tantum cibis 
habilis®; nos corpus tam putre sortiti,’ could issue only in a 
philosophy of asceticism. But Stoic asceticism was saved 


1 Cf. Swain, op. ctt., p. 146: “ The only form of redemption then possible 
was through an ascetic idealism. It was only because it presented just 
such an asceticism that Christianity was able to save civilization.” 

* Cf. e.g. his Ep. ad Eustochium (XXII), and ad Heliordorum (XIV). 

3 Ad Marc. 24. 5 Ed. XCII. 10. 

4 Seneca, Ep. LXV, 16. * Bp: CXX. 17: 


ASCETICISM AND COSMIC EMOTION 221 


from the extreme Oriental forms of self-mutilation through 
its union with a high sense of the value of man which 
persisted by the side of the deprecatory doctrine of ‘the 
flesh ’ and retained the primacy over the latter. 

Post-Aristotelian ethics favoured asceticism in concen- 
trating attention on the conduct of the individual. Asceti- 
cism, like mysticism, is a creed of solitude which thrives 
in individualism. The ascetic life aims at the good of the 
personal, out of relation to the corporate, life. Arnold * 
rightly speaks of the “asceticism and resignation which 
spread over the whole Graeco-Roman world about this 
time, resulting from exaggerated attention to the individual 
consciousness at the cost of social and political life.”’ 

The ascetic tendency affected all classes and systems. 
It found a firm footing in the systems of Orphism, Pytha- 
goreanism, Platonism, Neo-Pythagoreanism, and Neo- 
Platonism, in the Jewish sects of the Essenes and 
Therapeutae, and to a considerable degree in Pharisaism ; 
in Gnosticism of every variety. One of the higher philoso- 
phic influences making for asceticism was the theology of 
astralism. The devotee of this system, ‘the contemplator 
and exegete of heaven,’ as Posidonius* styled man, 
impassioned with cosmic emotion, impressed by the 
immensities of the universe, the brightness and purity of 
the constellations, the celestial harmonies, was inclined to 
despise the petty interests of earth and its pleasures.‘ Nearly 
every heresy of primitive Christianity was imbued with 
asceticism :° Gnosticism, Docetism, the systems of Simon 
Magus and Marcion, the Encratites, Montanists, Mani- 
chaeanism. Christianity itself could not escape the conta- 
gion, and departed in this respect from the moral equipoise 


1 Arnold, Rom. Stoicism, pp. 258-9 ; Seneca repudiates the practice of 
self-mutilation: Nat. Quaest. VII. 31, 3. 

PL 400, 

3 Cappelle, Die Schrift v. d. Welt, p.6; N. Jahrb. f. d. Klas. Alt. VIII, 
P. 534- 

4 “ Thus the devotion to knowledge is crowned in a sidereal devotion 
of a religious nimbus and becomes a holy calling which releases from all 
terrestrial passion. The exaltation of the intellectual life conduces to 
asceticism’”’ (Cumont, Acad. roy. d. Belgique ; Lettres, ’00, p. 270). 


222 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


of the teachings of its Founder, who, unlike His ascetic 
forerunner, was reputed a wine-bibber. His greatest 
apostle, Paul, did not escape the ascetic tendency, though he 
escaped the excesses of asceticism.! 

Every department of ancient life was affected by ascetic 
principles—questions of food and drink, property, the nature 
of matter, sex relations, the observance of days, the use of 
the baths, and other questions affecting cleanliness. Marriage 
and the procreation of children were strictly inhibited by 
the Essenes, Ophites, and the stricter Gnostics. Copulation 
in itself became a sin in revulsion from naturalism and 
antinomianism.’ Hence sexual intercourse was forbidden 
both within and without the marriage state. Virginity 
became a virtue superior to that of motherhood. Matter 
was looked upon as evil or as the seat of the evil principle ; 
the whole business of life was to release the soul from 
the contact and pollution of matter, from the body, its 
bane. The tenure of property for private use was discour- 
aged ; communism was practised by the Essenes and by 
the Neo-Pythagoreans, who traced the practice back to 
Pythagoras himself, and attempted by the Christians at 
Jerusalem. Even baths were omitted because the Oriental 
connexion between filth and sanctity had seized upon 
devout minds. Wallowing in mud, covering the body 
with dust, habiting oneself in sackcloth or in dirty garments, 
became symptoms of piety—the hall-marks of sincerity to 
some species of asceticism. Unfortunately for the Northern 
races, Christianity early fell into similar excesses of asceticism, 
by failing to serve itself heir to the Greek gospel of health, 
as witnessed by Greek statuary, and to the Roman gospel 
of cleanliness,’ to which the colossal remains of baths in many 


1 Dobschiitz, p. 41. 

* Dobschiitz, p. 127: ‘‘ The demoniacal mystery with which the act of 
procreation was surrounded by the ancients, who either deified it or held it 
accursed ”’; also p. 4o. 

3 Partly no doubt because of the abuses of the public bathing establish- 
ments, in which even Christian women seemed to the Church fathers to 
lose their modesty and become incentives to evil. The abuses attracted 
the attention of pagan emperors and Church Councils (e.g. Laodicea, 320). 
Cf. H. Dumaine’s art. Bains in Cabrol-Leclercq, Dict. 


MYSTICISM AND ASCETICISM 223 


a 


cities of the empire bear testimony, together with the sane 
teachings of the Founder. In regard to food and drink many 
fine points were raised by ascetics. Some were total ab- 
stainers from wine, some from flesh, some from pork. 
Vegetarianism was much in vogue not only for valetudinarian 
reasons but also for religious motives. Asceticism also 
required the observance of special days as fast-days or 
penitential days. Social life was on the whole decried by the 
ultra-religious in favour of some form of monasticism. An 
interesting papyrus from the site of the Serapeum of Memphis 
tells of a body of recluses attached to the Serapeum whose 
seclusion was of the most rigorous kind.? If the complete 
religious history of the Oriental temples were extant we 
should probably find that this was no isolated case: it was 
too much in keeping with the tendencies of the age to be 
such. 

(6) Mysticism fostered asceticism, and was in turn fostered 
by asceticism. A whole volume could be filled with the rise, 
development, results, and varieties of mysticism in the 
Graeco-Roman world. Here it is necessary only in a few 
words to point out the alliance of mysticism with Asceti- 
cism. Although ‘‘ Mysticism was a foreign ingredient in the 
Greek blood,” * the entry of mysticism was facilitated by the 
pantheistic character of Greek religion and the pantheistic 
trend in all Greek thought. There is a certain affinity be- 
tween pantheism and mysticism: it has always been 
difficult for mystics to escape pantheism. Mysticism was one 
refuge from the dualism which proved so insuperable to 
ancient thought, and which rendered asceticism a necessity 
for serious men. Since the days of Plato the idea of the 
ascent of the soul to a higher spiritual world had become 
prevalent, an idea which gave a relative insignificance to the 


1 Dobschiitz (Eng. tr p. 251, notes ‘‘ two influences which worked with 
disintegrating effect ’’ in early Christianity, viz. ‘‘ the divergence between 
the intellectual and the moral side of Christianity,’’ and ‘‘ the effect which 
the ascetic tendencies of the age had on its moral ideas.” 

? Bouché-Leclercq, Les reclus du sévapeum de Memphis (Paris, 1903) ; 
Preuschen, Ménchtum u. Sevapiskult (Giessen, 1903). 

® Rohde, Religion der Griechen, p. 27 (Kl. Sch. p. 338). 


224 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


affairs of this world. The whole business of man was to 
imitate God in order to increase in likeness to Him, who was 
conceived as the Absolute or as pure Spirit. This process 
of imitation involved the suppression of the natural and 
physical in the interests of the intellectual and the spiritual. 
Mysticism presents a positive and Godward side which 
consists in becoming godlike or a god, and a negative or 
man-ward side which involves an ascetic life of self- 
suppression. Sense cannot be silenced without much self- 
torture, and quietism cannot be attained until the passions 
are eradicated and the body loses its power over the soul.? 
(7) The prevalence of asceticism on any large scale has 
invariably been coincident with social upheavals. and 
economic confusion, and such conditions as drive men out of 
the old ways and discredit the working theories of a corporate 
life. In such periods the burden of family and social ties 
becomes oppressive.’ The birth-rate declines. Men eschew 
marriage in the bitter struggle against hunger, and because 
of the universal sorrow over the sufferings and loss of children 
which makes celibacy desirable, which again often conduces 
to the perversio vitae sexualis. The comforts of life are 
denied and the world is given up to despair. The result is 
either flight from the world on the part of individuals or 
such ascetic discipline as promises victory over the world 
by inuring to pain and transiency. The discrediting of 
fundamental preconceptions necessitates a fresh rethinking 
of life and the world; the contemplative, which favours 
asceticism, secures the right of way over the practical because 
of the apparent futility of effort. The despair or conviction 
of the badness of the phenomenal world projects the mind 
into the suprasensual, a projection which, where dual- 
ism is axiomatic, demands asceticism. The emotional 
excitements, ethical confusions, and failure of nerve in 
baffling crises furnish a fruitful occasion for the pathological 
outbreaks and fanaticism, which are the concomitants of 
asceticism, especially of the religious-mystical variety. 


1 Cf. Denis, Idées morales, II, pp. 204-5 
2 Cf. Paul’s discouragement of marriag€ t Cor. VII. 8, 40. 


SOCIAL UPHEAVALS AND ASCETICISM 225 


Men do not, with the even pulse of the day of comfort, gash 
themselves with knives, emaciate themselves with fasting, 
expose themselves to the rigours of a northern winter, or 
abandon wife and child for an ideal of life. In such crises, 
too, it is well known that religion is generally remade in its 
effort to overtake life and interpret the new situation. These 
revivals produce asceticism in milder or extremer forms 
according to the preconceptions of the age. 

The Graeco-Roman world was no exception to, these 
phenomena in the agonies of history. It is noteworthy 
that asceticism secured its first firm hold on Greece through 
the immense dislocations of the seventh and sixth centuries 
B.C., which made ‘ the Orphic life ’ of renunciation for a time 
a veritable gospel.1. Further, to Plato was due in no small 
degree the permanence of the ascetic movement, and this 
through his attempts to meet the bewildering challenges to 
authority and orthodoxy in his day. Still more in the 
Graeco-Roman period proper do we find the rapid growth of 
asceticism * from the second century B.c. to the fourth and 
fifth A.p. in the pagan Mysteries and Hellenistic philosophies, 
and in the Christian Church, evidenced in the increasing 
indifference to civic duties and desertion of social life, and 
‘decline of the birth-rate, so lamented by Polybius.? The 
republican wars of conquest, the subsequent civil wars, 
devastating earthquakes and frequent famines, the gradual 
extermination of the steadying middle class, the misery so 
universal (with the possible exception of the early Anto- 
nine era), new theories of holiness, deepening reflection, 
the brutality of individualism, the rapid vicissitudes of social 
life, atrocious systems of taxation, repeated political crises, 
the barbarian invasions of the empire, contributed to that 
world-weariness and pessimism which react to the extremes 
of self-indulgence or asceticism. 

VI. The Craving for Salvation. The phrase of Seneca, 


1 In opposition to Cappelle, Miss Harrison, Kennedy, de la Saussaye, 
Gomperz, and others, Rohde contests this (Psyche, II, p. 125 f.). 
2 Cf Murray, Four Stages, p. 181 ; Bigg, Church’s Task, p. 122. 
3 XXXVII. 9g. 
10 


226 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


ad salutem spectat, might well characterize the attitude 
of the Graeco-Roman world, especially about the dawn 
of Christianity... The cry for salvation was loud, per- 
sistent, and universal. In a bewilderingly new age, when 
venerable systems had collapsed, when the customs and 
conventions that had regulated human intercourse were 
rudely cast aside, when property was rapidly changing 
ownership, when life was unsafe because of conspiracies and 
jealousies, there arose in all hearts a longing for a more settled 
state of affairs, for social stability and political permanency. 
During such epochs of transition, when men are driven 
out of their old ruts and compelled to fresh thinking, 
the evil of the world and the ills that infest human life 
become more intolerable; the pain and sorrows of the 
individual become more intense through the consciousness 
of his isolation. When the nouveaux riches rise to lord it 
over families which for centuries had been cradled in the lap 
of ease, when the man who was the ornament of society 
to-day might to-morrow be on the way to the scaffold or to 
an island place of banishment, when the “ slings and arrows 
of outrageous fortune ”’ baffled the best, when parting with 
friends added bitterness to death, when the heretofore 
available and orthodox means of consolation failed, a cry 
arose for deliverance from the present order of things, for a 
Saviour. Men sought deliverance from the uncertainties 
of social life, the upheavals of political life, from the 
burden of grief and sorrow, from the reign of death, the 
universal power of demons and the malefic astral deities, 
from the oppressive tyranny of fate, the caprice of Sors, 
or Fortuna, the pollution of matter, the consciousness of 
guilt, the wasting of disease, from the taedium vitae, and 
from all the ills that ‘‘made human life a hell.’ ‘ The 
fulness of the times ’ was marked about the beginning of our 
era by a universal demand for salvation, by an Erloésungs- 
sehnsucht, such as has perhaps never been equalled except 

1 “Tn the time of Augustus the feeling of guilt and longing for com- 


munion and renewal emerge prominently”’ (Wendland, Am. Jour. Theo. 
"13, P- 346). 


QUEST FOR SAVIOUR-GODS 227 


in the pre-Buddhistic India.t_ Men began to call their gods 
‘Saviours,’ or to add ‘Saviour’ as a surname to such 
deities as retained some authority, or to new deities that 
had come into vogue—Zeus, Apollo, Aesculapius. Living 
rulers were lauded as gods who saved the race when the 
gods of theology were asleep. Thus, e.g., the Athenians 
addressed Demetrius the Besieger as ‘ the only true god,’ * 
and Julius Caesar as ‘ their Saviour and Benefactor.’ The 
same Caesar was spoken of by the cities of Asia Minor around 
Ephesus as the ‘god manifest, the common Saviour of 
human life’ (48 B.c.) An inscription of Halicarnassus * 
terms Augustus cwrihpa tod Kowod tav avOpaTwv yévous 
(‘ Saviour of the universal human race’), and even Nero 
is addressed, on an altarpiece of the year 67, as ‘ Nero, 
God the Deliverer (’EXevOepiw) for ever.’ Among all 
classes and races this desire—now more articulate, now 
less articulate—was felt. Some looked for the means of 
salvation in philosophy—-those lofty souls of Stoicism and 
Neo-Platonism. The Hermeticists sought in revelation the 
pathway to salvation by illumination and ‘the beauty of 
true religion and knowledge.’ Their spiritual kindred, the 
Gnostics, were tireless in their speculations as to the 
‘Mediator and Redeemer.’ In the antiphonal ritual hymn, 
preserved in the Acts of John, the candidate, probably in a 
sacred dance of initiation, prays ‘ I would be saved,’ to which 
Christ, the initiator, responds ‘ And I would save.’ The ideal 
wise man, by following whom the faithful Stoic would be led 
into the larger liberty, was sought for with increasing earnest- 
ness. But this ideal personage in flesh and blood was very 
difficult to discover. We even detect the note of despair: 
‘Where will you find him whom we have been seeking so 
many ages?’ asks Seneca. Eclectics such as Cicero culled 
from every accessible philosophy those elements which were 
regarded as most healthful and helpful for the higher life. The 


i Cf. Rittelmeyer, art. Evidéser in Relig. in Gesch. u. Gegenwart, II, coll. 
473: cf. Anrich, p. 55. 

? Athenaeus, Deip. VI. 62. 

3 Kenyon, Gk. Inscr. in Brit. Museum, No. 894. 


228 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


Platonists continued their efforts to raise the soul above the 
pollution of the body, and by means of imitation of God and 
through love to bring it finally to its dear homeland in 
the Ideal, which was God. The masses sought salvation 
in the Mystery-Religions, which promised sacramental 
grace here and a blessed future. The Jew was expectantly 
awaiting the Messianic salvation. 

All races of the empire were looking for some kind of 
deliverance from the present order—from finitude, sorrow, 
confusion, pain, and sin. They, however imperfectly, felt a 
need which was more clamant than they were conscious of. 
Salvation was conceived rather negatively as deliverance » 
from ills than positively as communion with God: it 
was conceived in terms of the natural and material and even 
political. But there were higher aspirations which in no age 
dominate all classes but emerge in the hearts of the spiri- 
tually-minded who are prophetic of a better future and who 
focus in their experience the needs of their age. It was this 
sense of need and this desire for salvation that disposed men 
and women towards the Mystery-Religions, and that in the 
breakup of ancient society drove them into the Christian 
Church. 

Ever more and more concrete and personal became these 
longings and premonitions of salvation. The conception of 
salvation developed into that of a Saviour just as Jewish 
Messianism evolved into the conception of a personal Messiah. 
If gods were to be esteemed by their deeds and power 
to influence humanity Alexander the Great would stand such 
a test. His personality made the impression of a superman 
or god. From this time onwards the vague Oriental God- 
man became increasingly necessary in a living religion and 
more human in his features. Whether Alexander,: or the 
Diadochian kings, or the emperor, or the deliverer from 
the terrors of superstition such as Epicurus,? or the 


1 Cf. Plut. Alex. 27; Apophth. Alex. 15. 

2 Epicurus was honoured by his disciples on the 20th of each month and 
on his birthday, and was hailed as Lord and Saviour (von Arnim, Pauly- 
Wissowa, R.E. VI. 135). . 


DIVINE PHILANTHROPY 229 


Righteous man? of Plato, or the Wise man ® of the Stoics, 
or the Hermetic Revealer of Truth, That,? or the Gnostic 
Perfect Man, or the Hellenistic- Jewish Logos, a great mystic 
like Apollonius of Tyana, or the Jewish Messiah, or the 
resurrected god of the Mysteries, each form of the idea 
suggested a mediator, an epiphany of the divine, a re- 
deemer from falsehood and finitude and death, a personage 
acquainted with our grief.‘ 

The writer of the Epistle to Titus (III. 4) reflects the re- 
ligious needs of his day and has emphasized the chief quality 
in the character of the God-man when he speaks of ‘ the 
kindness and philanthropy of God our Saviour,’ the need of 
a humanized God—a stage in religious progress which the 
Mystery-Religions accelerated. Practical sympathy with 
men was demanded of God. “ In the honorific inscriptions 
and in the writings of the learned philanthropy is by far the 
most prominent characteristic of the God upon earth.’ ® 
By such activity Hercules had been enrolled among the 
immortals, and in the Dream of Scipio’ the highest heaven 
was opened to service to one’s country. Euhemerism knew 
no gods except such as in their incarnation had conspicuously 
assisted mankind. In a similar strain Pliny’ asserts ‘ that 
mortal should assist mortal is to be a god; this is the way 
to eternal glory.’ Antipater* makes ‘well doing’ (rd 
evTointixov) an essential connotation of deity. 

This demand for divine philanthropy facilitated the propa- 
ganda of the Mysteries with their humanized suffering gods. 
Serapis was to his worshipper ¢vAavOpwrodtatos.’ Isis was 
generous in bestowing ‘a tender mother’s affection on the 
ills of mortals.’ Aesculapius was ‘ the great lover of men,’ 


1 Cf. Repub. II. 362 A, where the Righteous Man ‘ will be scourged, 
tortured on the rack, bound, will have his eyes burned out, and finally, 
after enduring much suffering, he will be crucified’ (cf. Cicero, De Repub. 
HEE oe ak 

2 Cf. Hirzel, Untersuchungen, II, p. 273 ff. 

2 Ch PomyXIll (XIV), 

4 Cf. Plut. De Def. Orac. 415 A. WOE SINS Le eT Oy 

5 Murray, Four Stages, p. 136. 8 Fyag. 33-4 (ref. Murray, p. 139). 

§ Tusc. Disp. I. 14, 32. ' ® Aristides, Or. Sacr. VIII. 54. 


230 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


the divine physician who heals because he loves,! whose 
cult could call forth the warmth of prayer preserved on an 
Attic stone of the second century A.D. : 


‘ These are the words of thy loving servant, O Asklepios, 
child of Leto’s Son. How shall I come into thy golden 
house, O blessed one, O God of my longing, unless thy 
heart is favourable to me and thou art willing to heal me and 
establish me again in thy shrine, that I may behold my God 
who is brighter than the earth in spring time? Thou alone, 
O divine and blessed one, art mighty. Thee, that lovest 
compassion, the Supreme Gods have granted as a mighty 
boon to mortals, as a refuge from their sorrows.’ * 


VII. Yearning for Immortality. In the Graeco-Roman 
age, particularly in the Christian centuries, one of the 
religious symptoms was a profound craving for immor- 
tality,’ the appetit d’un monde meilleur. The new inward- 
ness of the religious spirit quickened the universal human 
interest for continuity of the personality. ‘The hope 
of immortality, and the hope of existence, is the most 
venerable and mightiest of all affections,’ says Plutarch,‘ 
who clung with avidity to the hope in the absence of 
all demonstration. This attitude of the serious minds of 
the ancient world finds exquisite expression in Virgil, the 
interpreter of his age : 


‘Tendebantque manus ripae ulterioris amore.’ 


The minds of men were engaged upon the problem of their 
future. With little faith but with much pathos Euripides 
clearly envisaged the situation : 


‘ But if any far-off state there be 
Dearer than life to mortality, 
The hand of the Dark hath hold thereof, 
And mist is under the mist above ; 


1 Julian, Ep. 40. 

2 C.I.A. 3,171. Farnell’s tr. Greek Hevo-cults, p. 277. 

* Denis, ILjp. 254 ff. 

4 rijs didtérnros éXmis Kal ¢ rbBos Tob elvac rdvTwr epwTwy mpecBUTaTos Ov Ka 
héycros. Non posse suav. 26. Cf. De Sera Num. Vind. 18. 


YEARNING FOR IMMORTALITY 231 


So we are sick for life, and cling 
On earth to this nameless and shining thing, 
For other life is a fountain sealed, 
And the deeps below are unrevealed, 
And we drift on legends for ever.’ ! 


And in the same century the official memorial inscription * 
over those who fell at Potidaea could offer nothing better 
than ‘the ether received their souls, the earth holds their 
bodies.’ Some denied the possibility of continued existence 
after death, some treated it with ridicule, some left it an open 
question, but all were compelled by the circumstances of 
the age to consider the perennially interesting question of 
immortality. ‘ Which of these opinions is true, some god 
may know; what is probable is the great question,’ says 
Cicero of the nature of the soul, confessing im his est enim 
aliqua obscuritas.s Though there was much scepticism, 
much indifference, there was a yearning in most hearts for 
another life. The religions of Greece and Rome offered little 
to satisfy this human longing. The gods of Greece differed 
from men in little except that, though not eternal, they 
were themselves immortal.’ The di immortales of Rome 
were never considered by their worshippers as conferring 
immortality. 

It is singular that the majority of the astral theologians, 
whose influence was so pervasive in later paganism, had 
little interest * in or even denied immortality. Though 
Posidonius ? was an ardent believer in future felicity, and 
Seneca could look for a sidereal immortality * to satisfy the 
in mentibus nostris insatiabilis quaedam cupiditas veri videndt, 


1 Hippolytus, 191 ff., G. Murray’s tr. 

2 C.I.A. 442; Kaibel, Epig. gr. 21. 

3 Tusc. Disp. I, 11, 23; 32, 78. 

4 ‘La destinée d’outre-tombe était alors la grande préoccupation,’ 
says Cumont (R. Or. 2nd ed. p. 327). 

5 Rohde, Relig. d. Gr. p. 322. 

6 “‘D’une facon générale, les espérances eschatologiques n’occupent 
aucune place chez les astrologues’’ (Cumont, Acad. Royale de Belgique, 
Cl. d. Lettres, 09, p. 275). 

?7 Cumont, ib. p. 273, 

8 Cons. ad Marciam, 25; Nat. Quaes. prol. 17. 


232 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


and Julian had bright hopes for the future, Vettius Valens 
was very hesitant (‘if there is any retribution of good and 
evil after death ’)1 and the great Ptolemy * viewed himself 
merely as ‘a mortal and creature of a day.’ Generally, like 
Manilius and Ptolemy, they were content in directing their 
sidereos oculos to the shining heavens to be enraptured 
in cosmic ecstasy and to find the highest bliss in trans- 
porting communion with the celestials here, and in death to 
restore their souls, sparks of the cosmic fires, back to their 
eternal source without the conservation of individuality. 
The mysteries of Orphism provided an alternative to the 
eternal process of the ‘sorrowful weary wheel.’ The hope 
was eagerly embraced by Plato and given a firm place in his 
philosophy. To him man is ‘a heavenly plant and not of 
earth,’* the ‘ spectator of all time and all existence ’‘ with 
an innate knowledge of the heavenly patterns, who in 
self-examination * can adorn his soul, which is by nature 
immortal,’ in her proper jewels so as to face any future, for 
‘fair is the prize, and the hope great, the venture glorious,’ ? 
not in a sensuous continuity of existence,’ but in increasing 
godlikeness in a differentiated eternity. This great hope 
could never perish from the earth. The chief tenets of 
Plato’s faith filtered down to the masses during the sub- 
sequent centuries. But Platonism could never be conceived 
as a popular religion: it was too high for the multitude. 
Contact with the East, the spread of Orphic doctrines which 
inspired the world-weary Virgil, the rise of Neo-Pytha- 
goreanism,’ the apparent worthlessness of life, the isolation 
of the soul, the development of self-consciousness and the 
dread of extinction, such projected the thoughts to another 
order of things in which the all too patent inequalities and 
injustices of life would be remedied, and men raised above 
pain and finitude. The worst sceptics and materialists were 
obliged to deal with the desire for immortality which they 


1 Ed. Kroll, p. 14. & Phaedrus, 245 C f. 
2 smi Pal. IX. 577. 7 Phaedo, 114 C.D. 

3 Tim. 90 A. 8 Repub. Il. 363 B. 
4 Repub. Il. 486 A. ® Dill, p. pre 


’ Apol. 38 A. 


DOUBT AND HOPE 233 


attempted to eradicate. Stoicism, with its lofty sense of 
duty and resignation to the will pervading the universe, 
placed the scene of man’s moral life in this world. Such a 
stern Stoic as Epictetus and so loveable a Stoic as Marcus 
Aurelius seem satisfied with this creed. But there was no 
message for the heart in a return to ‘ the dear and congenial 
elements.’1 Other Stoics are divided between loyalty to 
their dogma and a hope for a better world. Thus Seneca, 
who oftener doubts than believes in immortality, writes to 
Lucilius characteristically for himself and for his age : 


‘I was pleasantly engaged in enquiry about the eternity 
of souls, or rather, I should say, in trusting. For I was ready 
to trust myself to the opinions of great men, who avow 
rather than prove so very acceptable a theory. I was sur- 
rendering myself to his great hope . . . when I was suddenly 
aroused by the receipt of your letter, and this beautiful 
dream vanished.’ ? 


Writing to his mother Helvia to console her and himself 
on his exile he concludes, after referring to the advantages 
of the mind being free to consider its own faculties and 
contemplate nature and the gods: ‘ (animus) aeternitatis 
suae memor in omne quod fuit futurumque est vadit 
omnibus saeculis.’ 

What the records of the age reveal is rather the prominence 
of the question of man’s future and the insatiable yearning 
for an immortal life than any uniform or universal belief. 
Faith probed the deep mysteries of life and death. The 
best philosophic array of arguments for a life beyond the 
grave could only make this bellum somnium probable, while 
those philosophers who denied immortality, particularly 
the Stoics, Sceptics and Peripatetics, could by no arguments, 
however plausible, eradicate the instinct of man for a life 
which gave to human love and sorrow its full dignity 

ABE PICO LIMO TSH Cla ls LA REP tO2 a2. 

8 Ad Helv. 20 (‘ The soul mindful of its own eternity investigates all that 
has been and shail be throughout all ages’); cf. Nat. Quaest. Praef. 12: 


‘ The soul has this argument of its divinity, that divine things delight it, 
nor does it address itself to such as irrelevant but as relevant.’ 


234 THE APPEAL OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


and meaning. Religion was content to believe in “ that 
undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller re- 
turns ”’ as a working hypothesis. A Platonist like Plutarch ! 
could say so finely: ‘ It is one and the same argument that 
establishes the providence of God and the persistence of the 
human soul: you cannot take away the one and leave the 
other.’ 

This desire for immortality turned men’s minds to those 
Eastern religions which were pre-eminently religions of 
authority rather than reasoned theologies, and which, with 
the authority of immemorial antiquity, supported by the 
texts and liturgies of their scriptures, defended by an 
exclusive priesthood, asserted man’s immortality and 
supplied sacraments of initiation by which mortals might 
become godlike or even gods. Plotinus, with his firm hold 
on the realities of the unseen, could on his deathbed at 
Pozzuoli declare to his friend Eustochius, ‘ I am striving to 
restore the Divine within us to the Divine in the All,’? 
but the ordinary man could contemplate the viewless things 
of death only in sacraments of a dying and resurrected god. 
These sacerdotal creeds did not renounce all attempts at 
proving their doctrine, but their proofs consisted rather in 
symbols, sacraments, and allegorical interpretations of their 
mythology, and in natural analogies. But the important 
thing was the certainty granted by the revelation on which 
the Mystery-Religions based themselves. It was only the 
religions of the East that could satisfy this instinctive 
yearning for immortality among the masses. Their doctrines 
constituted a veritable gospel to men who stood anxiously 
before the mysteries of the grave, as many of the mystery- 
believers testify.* Another Oriental religion emanating from 
Galilee was to announce a fuller and more satisfying gospel : 
‘ This is the life eternal, to know Thee, the only true God, 
and Him whom Thou didst send, Jesus Christ.’ It was 
the mESsaBe of the Living Lord prise gave men a new 
confidence ‘‘ to sail beyond the sunset.’ 


1 De Sera Num. Vind. 18. 2 Porphyry, Vita Plotini, 2 
3 Pages 139 ff., 238 ff. 


CHAPTER VI 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS IN CONTRAST 


ULTIMATE FAILURE OF THE MYSTERY-RELIGIONS 


Tis émtxe? rovs lepods kudPous Tijs mpos Gjfevavy evppoo’yys bri uh o olvoxdos Tov 
Beo§ Kal cuprociapxos Adéyos.—Philo, De Somniis, II, Cohn-Wendland, 249 ; 
M. I. 601. 


Sucu a striking phenomenon as the rapid. spread and 
persistence of the Mysteries can be accounted for only by 
their adaptation to the needs of the age. They offered to 
the masses and to many of the educated what neither Greek 
ethics nor Greek philosophy could give, something required 
by human nature but lacking in the state religions. If the 
Salvation Army, the Y.M.C.A. and the Masonic brotherhoods 
were to take away the prestige of the historic churches and 
ecclesiastical institutions of the English-speaking world and 
draw to themselves their membership, or if the deeply 
religious spirit of the Indian people, with their yearning 
through millennia to find God, were to gain predominance 
over Western Christendom, the result could not be more 
unexpected nor more revolutionary in the history of religion 
than was the victorious sweep of the Oriental religions over 
the ancient Mediterranean world. 

The Mysteries conveyed an evangel to their age. Yet 
they failed. Another gospel, concerning a ‘ gibbeted 
sophist,’ preached by unlettered and ignorant men and by 
learned and cultured men, proved God’s power unto 
salvation; it outstripped all its competitors, though it 
entered the Graeco-Roman world last in the race. They 
decreased; Christianity increased. To-day the Vatican 
stands where the last sacrament of the Phrygian taurobolium 
was celebrated. Constantine is said to have been 
encouraged, at a critical time in his struggle with Maxentius 

235 


4 


236 THE DEFECTS OF THE MYSTERIES 


before the battle of the Milvian bridge, by seeing at noonday 
in the sky a vision of a flaming cross bearing in Greek the 
inscription ‘ Conquer by this.” To the noble but misguided 
Julian ‘the Apostate,’ as he poured out his life-blood on 
the battle-field against Rome’s inveterate enemies, the 
Persians, are attributed the words, ‘Thou hast conquered, 
O Galilean.’ 

That the sacraments of the Mysteries were veritable means 
of grace to multitudes of initiates cannot be denied in view 
of the abundant testimony to the blessed issues of initiation. 
Neither ancient writers! nor modern investigators are 
agreed as to the religious value of the Mysteries. In esti- 
mating ancient testimony we should remember that religious 
abuses in every age attract more attention than the virtues 
of every-day life; that the testimony of eye-witnesses and 
initiates deserves credence over that of outsiders; that the 
ancient mystae observed their vows of secrecy with 
provoking fidelity ; that these believers have been mostly 
judged on the evidence of their most prejudiced and often 
ill-informed opponents, with their own lips sealed. We 
should remember too—what the church fathers sometimes 
forgot—that the many ancient Mysteries cannot be reduced 
to one common denominator, and that all, therefore, cannot 
be indiscriminately included under one sentence of com- 
mination.? Demosthenes knew better. There were Mys- 
teries as lofty as the Eleusinia, while numerous private 
Mysteries by their charlatanry disgusted the religious 
pagans. While good and evil are mixed as they are in human 
life aberrations and inconsistencies on the part of professors 
of religion need not surprise. He that is without sin in his 
own religious creed may cast the first stone at the ancient 
worshipper. An Orphic verse, ‘Many are the thyrsus- 
bearers, but few the mystae,’ * shows that the Orphics, of the 
nobler side of whose system Plato had a high opinion, 


1 Lobeck, Aglaophamus, I. p. 67£; Creuzer, Symbolik, p. 8491.; 
Hatch, p. 291; Farnell, Cults, III, p. 359. 

2 Farnell, Cults, III, p. 128. 

3 Phaedo, 69 C. 


SACRAMENTAL GRACE IN THE MYSTERIES 237 


recognized the presence of hypocrites in theirnumbers. The 
strolling mendicant Orpheotelestae gave Orphism a bad name, 
but its prevalence proves that it met a need in reference to 
the nascent sense of guilt. In the Republic Plato scorns 
Musaeus (popular Orphism) for promising in the Mysteries 
‘eternal drunkenness as the fairest meed of virtue,’1 and ° 
ridicules Musaeus and Orpheus for proclaiming absolutions 
and purifications through sacrifices and self-discipline to both 
living and dead.?_ Plato would look upon the purveyors of 
Orphic charms in the same light in which a bishop would 
view John Wesley’s itinerant and in many cases uneducated 
preachers in the eighteenth century. Demosthenes: gives 
a vivid description of his opponent, Aeschines, assisting his 
mother, Glaucothea, in the nightly purifications of the 
Phrygian mysteries of Sabazios in which there appears an 
elaborate symbolism and ceremonial : 


‘ When you grew to be a man, you used to read the scrip- 
tures and arrange other matters for yourmother at initiations, 
By night you donned the fawn-skin, prepared and cleansed 
the candidates, wiping off the bran and clay, raising 
them up from the purifications with the password “I 
have shunned evil: I have found good,” affecting a 
solemn air of secrecy that no one should publish such a 
watchword. .. . By day you conducted fine fraternities 
through the streets, crowned with fennel and poplar 
leaves, squeezing the broad, red-brown snakes and 
waving them over your head to the cry, Euot Saboi, and 
dancing to Hyes Attes, Attes Hyes, while you were 
acclaimed by the old women as leader of the procession, 
chief, chest-carrier, sieve-carrier, and other such appellatives. 
You took in pay for these services sops and twisted loaves 
and fresh cakes.’ 


Not an edifying procedure, nor suggestive of anything up- 
lifting : but Demosthenes’ aim was twofold: to present the 
worst side so as to discredit his adversary, and to contrast 
favourably his own membership in a rival Mystery-church, 


1 De Repub. 363 C.D. 2 Ib. 364 E-365 A. 
3 De Corona, 259 f. 


238 THE DEFECTS OF THE MYSTERIES 


the Eleusinian.! Religious tastes vary. Roman poets 
frequently refer to the devotion of their amatae to the 
Mystery-cults,? though doubtless the chaste Paulinas were as 
numerous at the shrines. Livy* dwells on the scandals 
connected with the Dionysiac brotherhoods in Rome in 
186 B.c., but he has, despite his bias, left in his narrative 
evidence of the better and more serious side of the Baccha- 
nalia—the propagandist zeal of the Graecus ignobilis sac- 
rificulus et vates, the sacramentum of initiation by which the 
candidates became ‘soldiers’ of the deity with symbolic 
armour of their ‘ holy warfare,’ the vow of secrecy, the ten 
days’ fast, the baptism, prophecy, and the fidelity of the 
great majority. Besides, no one would fairly judge the early 
Christian Churches by the unlovely picture of 1 Cor. XI. 
The recently published decree ‘ of Ptolemy Philopator, aiming 
at regulating private Dionysiac initiations throughout 
Egypt, might be cited against the Mysteries ; it is interesting 
as showing an Egyptian monarch called upon to deal with a 
psychopathic problem similar to that which the Corinthians 
_ submitted to Paul. 

| But ancient testimony is on the whole favourable as to the 
worth of the Mysteries, especially with reference to future 
beatitude. Pindar, a fervent Orphic, speaks thus*® of the 
Mysteries : 


GABtos boris Sav éxetva 
kolhay elow wrd x@dva. 
oldev wey Bidrov redeuTav 
oldev 6& didcdorov dpxdv, 


|| Sophocles °: 
“How thrice-blessed are they of mortals who, having 


1 Such is the obvious meaning of the words éréAes, éya SF érehovunv of 1b. 
265; cf. Foucart, Assoc. religieuses, p. 68. 

2 Cf. Catullus, X. 26; Ovid, Ars Amat. I. 75 ff.; Juvenal, VI. 511-52 ; 
Propertius, II. 33; Tibullus, I. 3, 33. 

3 XXXIX. 8. 

4 See Bibliography of Ancient Sources. 

5 Threnoi, frag. X. Bergk, 137; Boeckh, 102; Christ, 137: ‘ Blessed 
is he who hath seen these things before he goeth beneath the earth ; for he 
understands the end of mortal life, and the beginning (of a new life) 
given of the gods’ (Sandy’s tr.). 

® Frag. 719 Dindorf, 348 Didot; cf. O.C. 1050 ff. 


TESTIMONY OF THE ANCIENTS 239 


beheld these mysteries, depart to the house of Death. For to 
such alone is life bestowed there: to the others fall all ills.’ 
Cicero! affirms of the Greek Mysteries that, in addition to 
a civilizing influence * and a philosophy of the beginnings 
of life, ‘we have received from them not only good cause 
why we should live with joy, but also why we should die with 
a better hope.’ Plutarch, in his Consolation to his Wife 
(ch. x) on the death of their little Timoxena, comforts her 
with the faith in immortality learned through their becoming 
communicants in the Dionysiac Mysteries. The initiate of 
Sabazios cried in religious exaltation, ‘ I escaped evil, I found 
the good.’ The taurobolium effected ‘ rebirth for eternity.’ 
To the initiated Orphic dead the goddess of death declared 
“a god thou shalt be instead of mortal.’ On the tombs of 
-the devotees of the Alexandrian cult might be inscribed, 
‘Be of good cheer,’ or ‘ May Osiris give thee the water of 
refreshment.’ 

If it can be said with some truth that the Mysteries were 
more emphatic on immortality than on ethical demands it 
is also true that they were obliged to become increasingly 
ethical‘ in a practical bearing upon life. The orator 
Sopatros soberly claims, ‘ On account of initiation I shall be 
quite prepared for every moral demand.’* The exquisite 
ode in Aristophanes’ Frogs * implies a moral life on earth as 
a qualification for the Happy Meadows: ‘for to us alone 

1 Cf. In Verrem, V. 72,187; De Legg. II. 14, 36; N.D.I. 42, 119. 

2 This claim is well substantiated in the famous Amphyctionic decree 


from the second century B.c. discovered at Delphi about twenty years ago, 
which declares of the Athenians : 
Gy 6 Siuwos amdvrav Tay év dvOpwras ayaddv 
apxnyos KaTtacradels, éy pev Tod Onpwwdous Blouv 
Meryyayer Tovs avOpwrrous els Hucodrnra, mapalrios 
oD éyeviOn ris mpds adAHAous Kowwrias, 
Bull. Cor. Hel. 1900, p. 96. 

8 “ The fifth century B.c. was ripe for that momentous development in 
religion whereby the conception of ritualistic purity becomes an ethical 
idea. . . . By the time of Aristophanes the Mysteries had come to make 
for righteousness in some degree” (Farnell, Cults, III. p. ror f.). Cf. 
testimony of Diod. V. 49. 6. 

4 Walz, Rhet. Graect, VIII. 114. 

* 455 ff. 


240 THE DEFECTS OF THE MYSTERIES 


there is sun and cheerful light, who have been initiated and 
lived piously in regard to strangers and private individuals.’ 
The stern moralist of Hierapolis sees in the Eleusinian sacra- 
ments a means of moral betterment: ‘One should come, 
after purification, with sacrifices and prayer, possessed of the 
conviction that he is approaching sacred and venerable rites. 
Thus the Mysteries became edifying ; thus we attain the idea 
that they were established for discipline and for reforma- 
tion of life.’ In a well-known passage of Diodorus ® initia- 
tion in the rites of the Cabiri is claimed to issue in 
an increase of righteousness. Initiation fitted men to dis- 
charge more conscientiously their duties as jurymen.' 
‘ Righteousness ’ was a recognized attribute of Isis.‘ 

Special mention should be made of some of the beautiful 
prayers addressed to the mystery-deities. Lucius addresses 
the following thanksgiving * to Isis on his initiation : 


‘O Thou holy and eternal Saviour of the human race, 
ever lavish in thy bounties to mortals of thy choice. Thou 
bestowest a sweet mother’s affection upon the misfortunes 
of wretched men. Nor day nor night, nor even a moment 
of time passes which is not replete with thy benefits. By sea 
and land thou protectest men. Thou dispellest the storms 
of life and stretchest forth Thy right hand of salvation, by 
which Thou unravellest even the inextricably tangled web 
of Fate. Thou dost alleviate the tempests of Fortune and 
restrainest the harmful courses of the stars. Thee the 
heavenly ones worship and the gods infernalreverence. Thou 
turnest the earth in its orb; Thou givest light to the sun ; 
Thou rulest the world; Thou treadest Death underfoot. 
To Thee the stars are responsive; by Thee the seasons 
return and the gods rejoice and the elements are in 
subjection. At Thy command the winds blow; the clouds 
bestow their refreshing; the seeds bud and the fruits 
increase. The birds that range the heaven, the beasts on 
the mountains, the serpents lurking in their den, the fish 


% Diss. III. 21. 

BN 3149. 

3 Andocides, De Myst. 31. 

4 Plut. De Is. et Os..3; cf. Lafaye, p. 123. 
5 Metam. XI. 25. 


MYSTERY-PRAYERS 241 


that swim the sea, are awe-inspired by Thy majesty. But, 
as for me, I am too feeble to render Thee sufficient praise, 
and too poor in earthly possessions to offer Thee fitting 
sacrifices. I lack the eloquence to express what I feel about 
Thy majesty ; no, nor would a thousand lips, nor a thousand 
tongues, nor a perpetual uninterrupted prayer suffice. But, 
a pious though poor worshipper, I shall essay to do all within 
my power; Thy divine countenance and most holy deity 
I shall guard and keep for ever hidden in the secret place 
of my heart.’ 


Compare also the prayer of invocation in the so-called 
Liturgy of Mithra?: 


‘O Lord, if it please thee, announce me to the greatest 
God, . . . I,a man, son of A. and born of the mortal womb 
of B. and of spermatic substance, that he to-day, having 
been born again by thee, out of so many myriads rendered 
immortal in this hour according to the good pleasure of God 
in his surpassing goodness, seeks to worship thee, and prays 
to thee to the utmost of his human powers,’ 


and the Hymn of Regeneration in the same liturgy ?: 


‘Lord, hail, potentate of the water, hail, ruler of the earth, 
hail, potentate of the spirit... . Lord, having been 
regenerated, I depart in exaltation, and having been exalted 
I die. Born of that life-producing birth and delivered unto 
death I go the way, as thou hast established, as thou hast 
decreed, as thou hast created the sacrament.’ 


In the Hermetic literature * Tat learns from his father 
Hermes the Hymn of Praise for the Regenerate : 


‘By Thy blessing my spirit is illumined. ... In the 
spirit, O Father, what I see I utter. To Thee, O God, 
author of my birth, J, Tat, offer spiritual sacrifices. O God 
and Father, Thou art the Lord, Thou art the Spirit. Accept 
from me the spiritual sacrifices which Thou desirest, for of 
Thy will is all accomplished,’ 


1 Dieterich, Eine Mithrashturgie, 2nd ed. p. 10, 1. 34 ff. 

STON DutAntoo 7 i: 

3 Poim. XIII. 21,22, Reitzenstein, pp. 347 f.; cf. Kennedy’s tr., Sé. 
Paul and the Mystery-Religions, pp. 108-9. 


17 


242 THE DEFECTS OF THE MYSTERIES 


the answer to which prayer presented ‘through the Logos’ 
is ‘Thou hast come to a spiritual knowledge of thyself 
and of our Father.’ 


At the close of the Poimandres the Hermetic believer gives 
thanks for the Gnosis of salvation revealed to him by 
Poimandres : | 


‘ This happened to me as I received from the Spirit, that 
is, from Poimandres, the Word (Logos) of Authority. I 
became inspired of God and arrived at the Circle of Truth. 
Wherefore, with my soul and all my strength I give thanks 
to the Father, God: 


Holy is God, the Father of all the universe ; 

Holy is God, whose Will is accomplished by its own energies ; 
Holy is God, who wills to be known and is known of His own ; 
Holy art Thou, of whom all Nature was made an image ; 
Holy art Thou, whom Nature did not form ; 

Holy art Thou, more potent than all power ; 

Holy art Thou, transcending all excellence ; 

Holy art Thou, who surpassest all praises ; 


Accept reasonable holy offerings from soul and heart directed 
toward Thee, O Thou Ineffable, Unutterable, who art named 
only in silence. Grant to my prayer that I may not miss 
the knowledge in conformity with our true being ; strengthen 
me, fill me with such grace that I may enlighten those of 
my race who are in darkness, my brothers, thy sons.’ 4 


The following remarkable thanksgiving prayer? of an 
initiate of the Hermetic revelation-literature, from the Per- 
fect Word, will give some idea of the religious enthusiasm 
which the Mysteries could awaken. 


‘ We give thee thanks, O Most High, for by thy grace we 


1 Cf, also Mead’s tr. Thrice-greatest Heymes, II, p. 19 f.; Germ. tr. 
by Jacoby, p. 31 f. 

2 Greek text, discovered by Reitzenstein in the magical papyrus Mimaut 
of the third century a.D., will be found in his Hell, Mysterienrel. 2, pp. 
136-7 ; cf. Archu f. Religionswis. VII (’04) pp. 393-7. The Latin version, 
somewhat feeble, of the prayer is given in the Asclepius, 41. Cf. Mead’s 
Eng. tr. II, p. 389 f.; Germ, tr. in Jacoby, p. 35, and a partial Eng. tr., 
Kennedy, p. 109 fs 


ATTACKS OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGISTS 243 


obtained this light of knowledge, Name ineffable, honoured 
in addressing thee as God and blessed in the invocation of 
thee as Father, because thou didst reveal to all men and 
women a father’s piety and love and affection and thy most 
benign working. Thou hast bestowed upon us feeling and 
reason and knowledge—feeling that we may apprehend 
thee, reason that we may reflect upon thee, knowledge that _ 
by the knowledge of thee we may be glad. Saved by thee, 
we rejoice that thou didst show thyself to us completely : 
we rejoice that even in our mortal bodies thou didst deify us 
by the vision of thyself. Man’s sole thanksgiving to thee 
is to know thy majesty. We have come to know thee, O 
thou Light perceptible alone to our feeling; we have 
come to know thee, thou Light of the life of man ; we have 
come to know thee, thou fruitful Womb of all; we 
have come to know thee, thou eternal Principle of that 
which brings forth by the Father’s agency. Thus having 
worshipped thee we have requested no favour from thy 
goodness, but grant to our entreaty that we may be pre- 
served in thy Knowledge so that we may not fail to attain to 
this kind of life.’ 


The power of the Mysteries and their popularity in the 
early Christian centuries are eloquently attested by strenuous 
opposition of Christian apologists from Paul to Justin 
Martyr, and from Tertullian to Augustine. The Mysteries 
were the last redoubts of paganism to fall.1_ Prior to that 
their adherents were the educators of the ancient world 
for a religion which at an early stage departed from the 
immediacy of Jesus’ religion to become strongly sacramen- 
tarian. Just because of their similarities (due to demonic 
inspiration, according to Christian writers) to the central 
rites of the new faith the Mysteries formed the chief point 
of attack to Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Firmicus 
Maternus, Arnobius, Epiphanius, Hippolytus, and other 


1 * They were the embodiment of the whole syncretistic movement, in 
which nearly all who felt religious needs could find what they wanted .. . 
in them genuine religion sheltered itself under the forms of paganism ”’ 
(Inge, Plotinus, I, p.56). ‘‘ The Eleusinian Mysteries conducted the forlorn 
hope of Graeco-Roman paganism against the new religion ” (Farnell, Cults, 
HI; p.'227). 


244 THE DEFECTS 'OF THE MYSTERIES 


fathers. It is also noteworthy that the pagan apologists, 
e.g. Porphyry and Iamblichus, were as sensitive on the 
question of their sacraments as were their opponents. 

There exists considerable diversity of opinion among 
recent investigators as to the ethical and religious value of 
the Mysteries. Such scholars as Rohde,! Ramsay,? and Far- 
nell? incline to a deprecatory opinion of the ancient 
Mysteries. Others, like Glover,‘ Lake,’ Legge,* seem to 
adopt a neutral or hesitating position, while the great 
majority hold to a favourable estimate, e.g. Gruppe,’ 
Cumont,* Kennedy,’ Anrich,?? Wobbermin,! Dill, Loisy,™ 
Jevons,"* Vollers,” Bigg,1® and Inge.” There are the usual 
extremists—those who maintain that the Oriental cults 
compare favourably with Christianity, and that Christianity 
borrowed lavishly from its competitors, and those who 
would exalt Christianity by decrying everything outside 
it. Most writers now recognize that the Mysteries had 
offensive and unwholesome features together with much 
that exalted man above the limits of ordinary life and its 
sin and pain and parting. Had they been so intrinsically 


1 Psyche, II, p. 293 ff. 

2 Hastings, D.B. extra vol. p. 126a; but cf. C. and B.I, p. 92 f. 

3 E.g. Higher Aspects, p. 141 ; Cults, III, p. 191. 

4 Progress, Pp. 320, 323-30. 

5 Earlier Epp. 2nd ed. p. 39 f.; Stewardship, p. 71: “ they were genuinely 
religious ”’ but “ on the ethical side they were weak.” 

© I, pp. 22, 81 ff., 145 f. 

7 Gr. Myth. 

8 Rel. Or. 2nd ed. pp. XXV. 43. 

9 St. Paul, p. 84. 

LON Potayi tts 

11 Religionsgesch. St, p. 35 ff. 

12 Rom. Soc. 554 f., 569 ff., 581 ff., 623 ff. 

13 Les Mystéves paiens, pp. 25-206. 

14 Introd. p. 376. 

15 In Die Weltreligionen. 

16 Church's Task, pp. 45, 53- 

17 Plotinus, I, p. 56; Christian Mysticism, p. 351: ‘‘ The evidence is 
strong that the Mysteries had a real spiritualizing and moralizing influence 
on large numbers of those who were initiated, and that this influence was 
increasing under the early empire.”” For further favourable views cf, also 
Briickner, Cappelle, Harrison, Lafaye (p. 167 ff.) ; C. H. Moore, Religious 
Thought, p. 291 f. 


MORAL VALUE OF THE MYSTERIES 245 


bad as some assert it is difficult to account for 
their wonderful success as missionary religions. They lent 
themselves too easily to externalism by an exaggerated 
importance of ritual ; they awakened a religious exaltation 
such as has rarely appeared in religious history, but with 
which ethical considerations were not of primary interest ; 
they confused the physical symbol and the religious 
experience. But they succeeded in an aggressively religious 
and serious age, which proves that they were able in some 
degree to satisfy religious longings. Their adherents were 
doughty propagandists who believed that they had found 
the truth and therefore spoke. The Mysteries were a 
curious blend of higher and lower elements, sensuousness and 
spirituality, sensuality and asceticism, magic and prayer, 
remnants of naturalism and symbolic mysticism, deafening 
music and silent contemplation, brilliant lights and deepest 
darkness. In estimating these cults we must weigh their 
merits as well as their defects, but we must also finally 
adjudicate upon them, as we would upon Christianity, by 
their ideals. ‘“‘ The Mysteries,’ says Professor Gardner, ! 
“had a better aspect in that they taught of deliverance from 
impurity and of a life beyond the tomb, and a worse aspect, | 
in that they opened the way to superstition, to materialism 
and to magic.’”” ‘“‘ There were elements in some of them 
from which Christianity recoiled and against which the 
Christian apologists use the language of strong invective. 
But, on the other hand, the majority of them had the same 
aims as Christianity itself—the aim of worshipping a pure 
God, the aim of living a pure life, the aim of cultivating the 
spirit of brotherhood. They were part of a great religious 
revival which distinguishes the age ”’ is the verdict of Dr. 
Hatch.’ 

These views of Gardner and Hatch are on the whole fair 
estimates which do justice to the Mysteries and their appeal 
to bygone centuries. They were evangels which gladdened 
men’s heart, which brought joy and comfort in men’s 


1 Ephesian Gospel, p. 15; cf. id. St. Paul, p. 63. 
2 Influence of Greek Ideas, p. 291 f, 


246 THE DEFECTS OF THE MYSTERIES 


struggle, and which gave to life a new dignity by asserting 
the principle of private choice in religious matters, with the 
worth of the individual, and a moral nexus between life 
here and life beyond. 

Yet they failed and the religion of Jesus triumphed. 
Orphism, which introduced into Greek religion a note that 
resounded for at least twelve centuries and which by its 
syncretistic penetration left its mark upon so many other 
faiths, disappeared. Isis, the mother of tenderness, the 
goddess ‘ of a thousand names,’ commenced her victorious 
career in the Greek world in the Peiraeus1 in the 
fourth century B.c. and ended it in A.D. 391, when Theo- 
philus and his iconoclasts demolished the Serapeum of 
Alexandria and destroyed Bryaxis’ venerated statue of 
Serapis. The Great Mother of Pessinus, the first successful 
Oriental invader of the state religion of Rome, after winning 
the adoration of the West for eight hundred years, during 
six hundred of which she had a temple on the Palatine, 
lost her power. The Syrian goddess (Dea Syria, Atargatis) 
and her accompanying Baals, in spite of lending themselves 
so readily to that solar monotheism which became a con- 
spicuous phase of later paganism and their adoption by Nero, 
Heliogabalus, and Aurelian, never appealed to the sympathies 
of the ancient world as did the Great Mother and Isis. They 
perished, though they left more magnificent ruins than their 
competitors, who strove to supply a universal religion co- 
extensive with the imperial sway. Mithras Invictus, the 
god of soldiers, though identified with the Unconquered Sun, 
lost his sceptre after a reign in the West of over four centuries. 
The Hermetic religion of Revelation and Regeneration was 
too akin to occultism and pitched its demands too high for 
the masses. 

It is all too easy to lay bare the fundamental blemishes 

1 Foucart, Assoc. Relig. p. 83; Lafaye, Culte de Div. Alex. p.31. We 
have of course important archaeological evidence of a religious contact of 
Egypt with Greece centuries before this. An Egyptian figure of Isis 
together with Egyptian scarabs was discovered in 1898 in the cemetery 


of Eleusis (Skias, ’E¢. Apx., 98, p. 108 ff.) Cf, also Miss Davis, Asiatic 
Dionysus, p. 226 ff. 


ATAVISM TO NATURALISM 247 


of the Oriental cults and the reasons of their ultimate failure. 
They won their conquests partly by material and partly by 
spiritual weapons. They too often catered to, rather than 
countered, vulgar tastes. Elements of a dangerous character 
to unspiritual minds were imbedded in their ritual. The 
main defects conducing to their decadence and rendering 
them incapable of permanently satisfying the religious 
instinct were : 


I. They were freighted with myths of primitive natural- 
ism : 

“ All go back to a distant era of barbarism and have 
inherited from this savage past a multitude of myths, the 
offensiveness of which might be dissimulated, but not 
suppressed, by a philosophical symbolism, and of practices 
of which all the mystic interpretations could but ill conceal 
the fundamental crassness, the survival of a rude nature- 
worship.” } 


Nothing testifies more emphatically to the deadness of 
state religions in the Graeco-Roman world than the 
distaste for the sobriety and respectability of these and 
the emergence of hitherto suppressed superstitions which 
allied themselves with foreign nature-religions. This atavism 
to primitive naturalism was a feature of the religious life of 
the Hellenistic-Roman era.? The Oriental cults attempted to 
cast off what was repulsive in order to win the West and 
conform to the deepening moral conscience, but they retained 
enough of their past to disqualify them for the present. The 
cult-legends dating from a non-moral antiquity were 
explained as symbols of the life of man and of the deity. 
Such myths might to the pure-minded become symbols of 
spiritual truth which in its richness often defies articulate 
expression and comes in image before idea; but to the 
majority they were apt to be suggestive of evil. Religious 
processions in which the membra virilia were exhibited could 
hardly conduce to either reverence or morality. The world 


1 Cumont, Rel. Or. 2nd ed. pp. 107-8. 
* Gardner, Eph. Gosp. p. 13 f. 


248 THE DEFECTS OF THE MYSTERIES 


had outgrown phallism.t. Magical formulae, often a mean- 
ingless babble, unintelligible to idiotae and probably only 
vaguely intelligible to the initiate, were ingredients of 
their prayers. Much of the ritual was savage and bloody, 
requiring extremes of asceticism or degenerating into 
lubricity. Many were disgusted at beholding the processions 
along the streets in which self-emasculated priests held the 
place of honour, in which men in corybantic fashion raved 
and gashed their flesh with knives until their garments 
were stained with blood. Seneca, though himself an ascetic, 
speaks with scorn of these practices. The impressive 
sacrament of the faurobolium was offensively bloody, and 
carried along with its spiritual symbolism memories of a 
savage past. Though these Mysteries made a serious effort 
to keep pace with the needs of every age, they were burdened 
with an excessive conservatism which contributed to their 
decadence and thus bequeathed to Christianity an in- 
structive object-lesson. They introduced daring innovations 
to enhance their attractiveness ; they borrowed from each 
other in cult and ritual; they adopted new religious ideas 
or gave expression to such ideas as were in the air, so that 
each showed in its vocabulary the same great religious terms 
—baptism, regeneration, identification with the deity, 
ecstasy, theophanies, cathartic, salvation, immortality, 
Yet in this wonderful progression they never succeeded in 
superseding their original naturalism. Even the less crude 
forms of Mystery-Religion did not escape the admixture 
of spiritual and physical, e.g. Gnosticism and the religion 
of the Hermetic Literature. It astonishes one to read in the 
Liturgy of Mithra, probably based upon Hermetic * religion, 
beautiful prayers interlarded with directions as to the proper 
breathing, shouting, gesticulation, etc. Evidently in these 
more enlightened systems there was a physical attitude 
in prayer as well as a spiritual. 


1 Cf. Gruppe, Gr. Myth. I, pp. 886, 1329; Herod. II. 48. 

2 Per contyva Reitzenstein, who explains it as a strongly hellenized 
redaction of Iranian ideas under Egyptian influence (N. Jahrb. f. d. Kl. 
Ait.’04, XIII, p. 192; Hell. Myst.-Relig. 2nd ed. p. 97) 


ALLIANCE WITH ASTROLOGY AND MAGIC 249 


The Mysteries seem to corroborate the unpleasant truism 
that where ritual abounds the spiritual vision is oftener 
marred than quickened. The simple publican goes to his 
house justified when the scrupulous Pharisee has only 
deceived himself. The Greeks and Romans built their most 
beautiful temples when the spirit of their city-state 
religion had departed. If gorgeous ritual, impressive cere- 
monial, aesthetic cult, artistic edifices, and images, and 
a costly priesthood could save a religion these Mystery- 
Religions would have succeeded, especially those of the 
Great Mother, and Isis, and the Unconquered Sun. 

‘II. The Mystery-Religions linked themselves with a 
pseudo-science, Astrology, and with a pseudo-religion, Magic, 
which contributed to their popularity for a time but under- 
mined their spirituality by fostering debilitating credulity 
and imposing terror in religion, and rendering them unequal 
in the contest with Christianity. Magic, ‘‘ the bastard sister 
of religion,’’ was the most dangerous ally. 

Egyptians, Syrians, Greeks, Samaritans, Romans, Jews, all 
practised this black art, which was as universally believed in 
and feared as in the Middle Ages or in the sixteenth century. 
Oriental priests were regarded as specialists in the art: 
for long the temples of the Euphrates and later of Egypt 
retained practically a monopoly of this supernatural science. 
The burning of the valuable collection of works at Ephesus 
as a result of Paul’s preaching is one evidence of the preval- 
ence of this belief in Asia Minor. Magic was one of the most 
lucrative trades of that age ; it flourished in spite of stringent 
police regulations and punishments far more drastic than 
those attached to the practice of astrology. Simon Magus 
offered the apostles a large sum to secure the pneumatic 
endowments of early Christianity, in the belief that he would 
recoup himself richly in the increased revenue from the 
practice of exorcism and kindred arts. 

Strange to say, the Jews—the most successful mediators 
between East and West—became adepts in this illicit form 
of religion, for whatever reasons—their desire for gain, 
their propagandist zeal to outbid pagan religions in what 


250 THE DEFECTS OF THE MYSTERIES 


were regarded as demonstrations of power, as later the 
Christian exorcists essayed to outbid Jewish and pagan 
competitors ; their syncretistic capacities, while retaining 
their own essential character; the antiquity of their 
religion, and its prominence among Oriental religions ; the 
unique eminence of Jahweh, due to an uncompromising mono- 
theism which permitted no goddess nor son nor satellite 
deities to detract from his grandeur. No deity ranked so 
high or is found so often in magical incantations as ‘ Jahweh ’ 
in many corrupt forms; also as ‘the God of Abraham,’ ‘ the 
God of Isaac,’ ‘ the God of Jacob.’ The Jews were noted for 
their ability to interpret dreams, to extract the power of 
enchantments, and to manufacture love-potions, which were 
in enormous demand. Some of those who burned their 
books of incantations in Ephesus were Jews: Elymas and | 
the sons of Sceva are represented by Luke as Jewish 
sorcerers, The Jews enjoyed a unique reputation as 
exorcists throughout the empire. 

The magic that prevailed was not the primitive and 
enchoric sorcery of Greek and Roman superstition, but the 
professedly scientific semi-religious magic which had been 
cultivated for millennia on the Euphrates and in the East.’ 
The West had as little faith in its magic as in its state 
religion, Hence the Mediterranean world was invaded by 
a trinity of Oriental religions or quasi-religious forces which 
in their alliance threatened to sweep all before them—the 
Mysteries, Astrology, and Magic. The Mystery-Religions 
stooped to magical practices because of their unspiritual 
conception of the deity and the relation of man to God ; the 
magicians, mostly of Oriental provenance, resorted to the 
liturgies and religious formulae and divine names of the Mys- 
teries and of Judaism because these were of more august 
authority than the Western religions. Magic was also in 
demand as the means of redemption from the omnipresent 
dualism of the age, which made earth and heaven a scene of 

1 Harnack, Mis. and Exp.I, p. 156 f. 


* Cf. Cumont, Rel. orient., Eng. tr. p. 186; Astrology, p. 74; Wendland, 
Hell,-Rom, Kultur, p. 81; Maury, Hist, des Religions, III, p. 255 ff. 


ASTROLOGY AND DETERMINISM 251 


struggle between demonic powers: it became one of the 
chief weapons in the religious apparatus of that day to deal 
with the influence of demons. Astrology shackled the ancient 
world in determinism, from the burdens of which men sought 
escape in the Mysteries and in magic. In this way the 
Mystery-Religions sought to provide a way of escape from the 
capricious acts of fortune, from the unbridled will of demons, 
and from the oppressive sense of fatalism concomitant with 
Astralism, Astrology also vindicated its right to member- 
ship in this Oriental group by directing attention to the 
heavenly regions of light, in which, among the seven planets 
(Sun, Moon, Mercury, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus), the 
Sun occupied a position of hegemony as the source of light 
and life. In this way the germs of sun-worship, or at least 
a marked reverence for the sun, which were present in the 
religions of Greek and Rome, developed under Oriental 
teaching into that solar monotheism in which declining 
paganism sought to give expression to the religious instincts 
of monotheism. On this tendency of the age, as on so many 
others, the Oriental cults fastened; they brought them- 
selves into line with it, and promoted it as advantageous to 
their propaganda. The West, while it fell under the spell 
of astrology, also produced a considerable reaction upon it. 
Coming in contact with the Greek science of mathematics, 
astrology began to assume the character of astronomy, and 
this contact reacted upon both religion and its congener, 
magic, On religion— 

“ The effect was much the same as that produced by the 
discoveries of Copernicus in the sixteenth century and those 
of Darwin in the nineteenth. Every religion of the Graeco- 
Roman world which sought the popular favour after the 
discoveries of Hipparchus took note of the seven planetary 
spheres which the geocentric theory of the universe supposed 
to surround the earth, and even those known before his time, 
like Zoroastrianism and Judaism, hastened to adopt the 
same view of the universe and to modify the details of 
their teaching to accord with it.” 2 

E.g. the acceptance of the seven stoles of Isis, the seven- 

1 Legge, I, p. 117. 


252 THE DEFECTS OF THE MYSTERIES 


stepped ladder and seven altars of the Mithraic Mysteries, 
the seven Amshaspands of the Avestas, and the seven days 
of the Jewish week. On magic— 

“The sevenfold division of things which implied that 
each planet had its own special metal, precious stone, 
animal and plant, placed at the disposal of the magicians 
an entirely new mode of compulsion which lent itself to 
endless combinations; while for the same reason special 
conjuratives were supposed only to exercise their full in- 
fluence under certain positions of the stars.” } 


When we consider the powerful and popular combination 
of the Mysteries, Astrology, and Magic, we realize more 
‘wividly the word of St. Paul: ‘for we have to struggle, not 
with blood and flesh, but with the angelic Rulers, the 
angelic Authorities, the potentates of the dark present, the 
spirit forces of evil in the heavenly sphere,’ ? also how his 
\triumphant ‘I am persuaded that neither the Powers, nor 
’ the Ascension of the stars nor their Declinations shall be able 
to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our 
Lord’ was a gospel which awakened fervent hallelujahs from 
many a heart. An early apologist * declared of Christians, 
‘We are above Fate. Instead of wandering demons, we 
have come to the knowledge of one Lord who wanders not.’ 
Christianity alone set its face against astrology.‘ It dared- 
’ to take the unpopular course, but astrology yielded long 
before magic, with which the sacramentalism of early Chris- 
tianity kept too close company, so deviating from the ‘con- 
ception of Jesus. The ideas of magical efficacy were deeply 
rooted in paganism: when pagans began to rush into 
the Christian Church because her success seemed assured, 
or because of the superiority of her Redeemer over de- 
monic potentates, they brought with them magical or quasi- 
magical conceptions which have infected Christian theology 
and worship. But if Christianity did not come unscathed 
out of the conflict with magic it rendered the ancient world 

1 Legge, I, pp. 117-18. 2 Moffatt’s tr. 
3 Tatian, Ad Graecos, 9 (with play on mAavyrav); cf. also 4, ‘ The 


sun and moon were made for us; how am I to worship what are my 
servitors ?’ and Io, 4 Cf. Cumont, Astrology and Religion, p. 167. 


MAGIC AND RELIGION 253 


the immense service of extracting the terrors of the magic 
art and of pointing men to a purely spiritual conception of 
their relation to the deity : ‘ God is Spirit, and His worship- 
pers must worship Himin spirit andin truth.’ Christianity’s 
competitors and forerunners took the popular side and 
participated in the magical practices of their day. In fact, 
the Oriental cults tended to elevate the position of the 
magician and to put at his control more efficient weapons. 
. The result was the same as if Paul had encouraged the desire 
for those ecstatic psychopathic phenomena so prized in 
Corinth rather than for the experience of a resident Spirit 
~ which made for holiness ; or as if our Lord had congratulated 
the disciples who returned flushed with the success of their 
exorcisms rather than ‘rejoice not in this that the demons 
submit to you; but rejoice because your names have been 
written in the heavens’ (Luke, X. 20). -— 

Every living religion must take into account the spirit of 
the age ; it must interpret the Zevtgeis¢t. But a living religion 
must not conform to, but transform, the spirit of the age. 
Herein Christianity succeeded—not absolutely—far beyond 
her rivals that offered too generous terms to prevalent 
conceptions and practices. Astrology by its tyrannous 
fatalism drove men to magic to combat through the theory 
of universal sympathy the baneful influence of the astral 
deities, while magic drove men to the Mystery-Religions. 
If we could adequately imagine the incubus of astrology — 
upon, and the constant nightmare of magic to, the Graeco- 
Roman age we could better understand the success of the 
Mystery-Religions and the appeal of Christianity as par , 
excellence the religion of redemption. But ‘“ we probably 
realize very inadequately the pernicious effects of astrology 
and magic in the last age of pagan antiquity. These 
superstitions were all-pervading, and, except for accidentally 
stimulating interest in the heavenly bodies, and to a less 
extent in physics, they did unmitigated harm.” Magic 


1 Inge, Phil. of Plotinus, I, p. 50. ‘* We have never been thoroughly 
frightened ; the ancient world was frightened: there is the great differ- 
ence” (Bevan, Hellenism and Christianity, p. 81). 


254 THE DEFECTS OF THE MYSTERIES 


did not do its evil work only in the grossest forms, 
necromancy and the mixing of poison potions and such- 
like.1 In relation to religion it did its most harmful work 
by driving men to religion for ulterior and questionable 
purposes: they came for the loaves and fishes ; for theurgy 
and exorcism ; to secure a love conquest or to discover a 
guilty party ; to see signs and miracles, even to find means 
of compassing the death of enemies.? But magic as a debased 
form of religion rests upon “‘ the notion that it is possible, 
instead of propitiating, to compel the spiritual powers.” * 
The chief means of accomplishing this is Gnosis, or exact 
knowledge of their proper name, correct formulae and their 
authoritatively prescribed mode of approach. This belief 
gave rise to an esoteric doctrine, or Disciplina arcant, 
restricting the full benefit of the religion to a secret so- 
ciety of initiates, whose knowledge of the deity and his 
ways cannot be divulged in detail to outsiders. The usages 
of the religion became a monopoly of a favoured few baie 
possessed the keys of the kingdom of heaven. 

Philosophy must probably pitch its note too high for the 
masses, but a religion which seeks to become universal by 
meeting the needs of man must make its redemptive message 
intelligible to the wayfaring men. In addition to driving 
men to religion from ulterior motives the magical conception 
in any form conduces to formality and externalism. Prayer, 
instead of being a communion of the soul with God, degene- 
rates into incantation and intonation independent of the 
inner condition of the worshipper. Sacraments, instead of 
being means of grace conditioned wholly by the spiritual 
receptivity of the participants, become virtuous in their 
own right, their efficacy resting upon an opus operatum. 

It must not be understood that the Mysteries were forms 
of magic rather than religions of propitiation and redemption, 


1 Cf. Miss MacDonald, Inscriptions Rel. to Sorcery in Cyprus (in Proc. 
Soc. Bib. Arch. ’90-’91, 160 ff.). 

? Tacitus narrates that the death of Germanicus was attributed to 
carmina et devotiones and the inscription of his name upon magic lead tablets 
found on the premises (Aun. II. 69; cf. Dio Cassius, LVII. 18). 

SyLegee. vii 1s 90, 


MAGIC AND CHRISTIANITY 255 


but they linked their fortunes for good and evil with their 
Oriental sisters, Astrology and especially with Magic. 
The only appeal of any religion is ultimately its spiritual 
message; but association with magic undermined the 
spiritual power of the Mysteries. .‘‘ Those [pagan] Mysteries 
were never able completely to sever themselves from magic ; 
that is, the mystae usually attached a mysterious efficacy 
to the mere act of partaking, apart from the motion of will 
and heart which really gave it the possibility of being 
efficacious.” 1 The first Gospel informs us that Magi came 
from the East to announce the birth of the Messiah and to 
do obeisance—a prophetic text. Tertullian, referring to the 
same Magi ‘having received a dream oracle returned 
homeward by another way,’ sees in it an allegory ‘ that they 
should no longer walk in their old way.’ ? 

The Jews, as above mentioned, excelled in syncretistic 
magic, and particularly in exorcism. This would bea matter 
of individual taste and enterprise. But the religion of 
Judaism was by no means free from the magical element. 
This may be seen in its excessive ceremonialism and meticu- 
lous observances of customs and traditions possessing no 
intrinsic value. To the outsider salvation was offered 
only by entrance through the gate of circumcision into Mo- 
saism. Not merely a hygienic but a religious significance 
was attached to washing before meals. Certain foods were 
taboo regardless of the truth now so self-evident that it 
is not what enters into a man that defiles him. Prayer 
in the posture towards Jerusalem or at prescribed hours 
was supposed to have a right of way to the ears of the 
Eternal. Ideas such as the supposed defilement from 
contact with the dead, from eating with those outside the 
covenant, from partaking of food offered to idols, rest 
ultimately on a magical basis. When Paul entered the lists 

1 Gardner, Eph. Gosp. pp. 206-7: cf. Religious Experiences of St. Paul, 
p. 67 f: ‘‘ As the best points in the Mysteries were absorbed by Chris- 
tianity, so the worst were absorbed by magic—magic, which always appears 
as the dark shadow cast by religion, and which takes the place of religion 


in the view of those who have not in them the seed of religious growth.’’ 
2 De Idol. 9. 


256 THE) DEFECTS .OF ‘THE- MYSTERIES 


on behalf of a religion of the free spirit as against the cult of 
legalism he was really opposing magic in religion. 

It will increase our sympathy with the Mysteries if we not 
only avoid the historical blunder of identifying them with 
magic, but also if we do not unfairly charge them with the 
many abuses to which magicians converted their liturgies 
and debased their theological conceptions. It was faith in 
the potency of the ‘name ’ of the Mystery-god that dictated 
these aberrations. Magic laid hold also of Jewish and 
Christian formulae and holy names. We shall more readily 
understand the apparent unspirituality of the Mysteries 
when we recall how easily magic found entry into Chris- 
tianity, what havoc it wrought through centuries, and with 
what difficulty it was extruded.1. The typical ecclesiastic, 
Cyprian, stands not far apart from any Mystery-priest 
when he seriously chronicles stories of the deadly efficacy of 
the elements of the Supper both upon a little girl who had 
not reached years of moral discrimination and upon adults. 
One woman who surreptitiously took the elements ‘ received 
not food, but a sword,’ causing internal convulsions. A 
guilty man found that the elements received from the priest 
turned into cinders in his hand.2 The sober Gregory of 
Nyssa relates how his namesake, the Thaumaturgus, spent 
a night in a pagan temple, which resulted in the flight of the 
gods, much to the discomfiture of the priest, who heaped 
execrations on Gregory’s head until the latter in pity wrote 
him a parchment ‘ Gregory to Satan: Enter,’ which, when 
laid upon the altar, immediately attracted back the demons. 
Novatian discovered a sure prevention against departure 
from his teachings by making his followers swear ‘ by the 
body and blood of our Saviour, Jesus Christ, that you will 
never forsake me nor return to Cornelius.’ 

These few examples, out of scores, give some idea of the 
_ 1 Richard Baxter declared in the seventeenth century, “ A man must 
be a very obdurate Sadducee who would not believe in it,” and as late as 
1760 to John Wesley ‘‘ Giving up witchcraft is in effect giving up the Bible.” 

2 De Lapsis, 25-26; cf. refs. in Bigg, Church’s Task, p. 83 f., who 


remarks, ‘“‘ The church-ale was so like the heathen festival that it was really 
the same thing, though a little better at every point.” 


RELIGIONS OF AN EXTREME TYPE 257 


forces which Christianity ultimately overcame, but with 
which the Mysteries made a questionable truce. 

III. Another weighty cause of the ultimate failure of the 
Mystery-Religions was that they represented an extreme 
type of religion which did not hold the social and the 
religious instincts of manin equipoise. An extreme move- 
ment sooner or later inevitably produces a reaction. The 
sanity of mankind is permanently attempting to find the 
equilibrium of the human faculties and aspirations. Each 
era is sure to discover the ‘‘ too-much ” or the “ too-little ”’ 
of the preceding, wherein lay its weakness and its warning. 

There are two! clearly marked types of religion, (a) the 
social-ethical, or political, and (0) the individualistic-mystic, 
or personal type. The former might be designated (in He- 
gel’s phrase) religions of utility, and the latter religions of 
redemption. The one type looks to the welfare of the 
community, and stresses social duty; the other stresses 
the salvation of the individual soul. The one seeks a brother- 
hood in a particular combination of men such as tribe, clan, 
race, or nation ; the other aspires to identification with or 
absorption into the deity. In the political type the nation 
or clan is the religious unit, for whose prosperity primarily 
the rites of the religion are practised; in the personal 
type the individual is the religious unit. The one type 
goes “ the trivial round” of common life, the other seeks 
to enjoy the Vision Beatific. 

These two types appear prominently in the Graeco- 
Roman period. The political type is represented in its 
strength and in its weakness by the city-state religions of 
Greece and Rome, and in its strength by the religion of 
Israel. The personal type is represented by the Mystery- 
Religions and the Greek moral philosophies. In the 
Mysteries the main bond was that of fellowship in the same 
patron deity. Into the one men entered by birth, religion 
being as hereditary as citizenship; into the other men 
entered of their own volition through initiation, or rebirth. Ae 


1 Glover recognizes three great stages in religious thought: Magic, ~ 
Morality, and Personal Relation (Progress, p. 15). 


18 


258 THE DEFECTS OF THE MYSTERIES 


The one found its sphere in a given corporate unity; the 
other in private and voluntary association distinct from the 
state and trans-social. 

The historical movement of religion is almost invariably 
from the political to the personal type, while the innate 
desire of humanity for unity maintains the struggle to find 
a synthesis between these two extreme types, The city- 
state religions of Greece and Rome and the Church-state 
of the Jews were manifestations of a certain extreme position, 
from which the Mysteries were a wholesome reaction. But 
the Mystery-Religions reacted to the other extreme— 
a reaction of epoch-making moment to religion. Each 
type represented an important facet of divine truth, but for 
the time of its predominance obscured another equally 
valuable truth. ‘The epoch-making transition is the 
advance of the human mind from that type of religion which, 
by emphasizing the social ideal, exalts moral obligation, 
to that type which, by emphasizing the individual ideal, 
exalts mystical aspiration.’”?1 The Mysteries proved of 
inestimable value in introducing the principle of voluntary 
choice in religious concerns, by stressing the personal 
aspects which deepened the self-consciousness, by pro- 
claiming need of regeneration, by directing the mind to 
immortality, and by fostering that mysticism which makes 
the things unseen real. They failed by neglecting or 
depreciating other aspects of the life of man upon earth in 
his social environment.* 

The Greek and Roman social-ethical religions were easily 
displaced by the personal Mysteries. But there was one 
religion of the earlier political type which did not yield to 
the Mysteries, but entered the lists against them. The 
religion of Israel was for six centuries, from the days of 
Jeremiah and Ezekiel to the triumph of Pauline Christianity, 
agitated by the conflict between the two competing 
principles of religion—the political and the personal, and 
this conflict was in no small degree a preparation for the 


1 B. W. Bacon, Hib. Jour. April ’13, p. 620; cf. 622. 
2 Cf. Cumont, Rel. orient. 2nd ed. p. 69. 


POLITICAL AND PERSONAL RELIGIONS 259 


appearance of a daughter-religion which was destined to 
succeed where Israel failed. Israel handed on the unsolved 
problem to Christianity—a problem which had rent her own 
soul, which had produced bitter divisions within the 
Theocracy, which gave birth to parties of such marked 
polarity as the Essenes and the Zealots, and which finally 
caused the large secession from the synagogue into the 
Ecclesia. The religion of Israel made a notable attempt to 
combine both principles, and, though it was and always 
remained a nationalistic religion, it made provision for 
individualistic aspirations to an extent never dreamed of in 
Greece or Rome. The social-ethical consciousness, however, 
had so dominated the thought of Israel that individualistic 
religion was looked on askance by the authorities, whose 
dislike of individualism was increased by the obvious fact 
that the religions of the individualistic type were not 
conspicuous for ethical requirements. 

The appearance of personal in contrast to political religion. 
in the ancient world was a decided advance of the human 
spirit. The next religious question which presented itself 
was: Are these two types to be set in juxtaposition or in 
opposition? Are they mutually exclusive ? or may not 
a synthesis be found? If we accept Hegel’s formula of 
evolution—thesis, antithesis, synthesis—we might say that 
the Greek and Roman religions represented the thesis 
(social-ethical religions), the Mysteries the antithesis (in- 
dividualistic-mystic) ; while Judaism presented both thesis 
and antithesis, but laboured in vain to discover the synthesis. 
It was Christianity that found the synthesis. Christianity 
was compelled to face the problem because of the conflict 
between the political religions of the West and the personal 
religions of the East, which was growing in intensity around 
her, and because Judaism, which had fostered her early 
years, had suffered much heart-searching on the question. 
If Christianity was to be what it professed—a genuine 
universal religion—it must resolve the enigma and find a 
means of satisfying both the social and the individual 
instincts of man, of making man at once moral and mystic, 


260 THE DEFECTS OF THE MYSTERIES 


of combining the complementary truths ‘that we are 
members one of another’ and ‘all souls are mine’ into an all- 
comprehensive truth. Justice must be done “to the one 
[type] interested and influential in the conduct of this life, 
but failing to meet man’s mystical yearnings; the other 
fulfilling man’s mystic yearnings, but failing to give -the 
life in this world a moral content and meaning.’”’! Chris- 
tianity vindicated its superiority to the city-state religions, 
the Mystery-Religions, and Judaism in proving a “ recon- 
ciliation of the two types in a higher synthesis of an ethical 
religion of redemption which redeems from this world, 
and yet enables men to find in this world a sphere of moral 
activity and purpose.” ? It met the whole needs of man 
both in his personal aspirations and in his social relations 
on earth. It held together in beautiful equipoise the two 
sublime ideas of a divine social order, the Kingdom of God, 
and of the inestimable worth of the individual personality— 
‘what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and 
lose himself?’ Religion and morality were indissolubly 
wedded in Christianity; faith must be manifested in 
works. 

The way of Christianity towards the reconciliation of the 
two extreme types of religion had been prepared both 
negatively and positively by the Mysteries and Judaism. 
The Mystery-Religions made man conscious of personal needs 
and taught him to aspire above earth and matter to an 
identification with God. Unfortunately, this enthusiasm 
or exaltation was not accompanied by a marked change in 
conduct ; spiritual aspiration did not of necessity imply 
anew moralideal. Surely Professor Gardner* exaggerates 
when he says, ‘‘ We have no reason to think that those who 
claimed salvation through Isis or Mithras were much better 
than their neighbours: they did not, therefore, live at a 
higher level,’’ whereas Christians were “‘ not merely filled 
with a spiritual enthusiasm, but that enthusiasm took the 
form of a self-denying life, a life of holiness and Christian 


1S. Cave, Christianity the World-Religion, Exp. Times, April ’19, p. 316. 
2 Ib. SUSTCERUl, pi 0 Jide 


ETHICAL HERITAGE OF JUDAISM 261 


love, an ‘enthusiasm of humanity.’’’ The trouble which 
Paul experienced through the moral aberrations of his 
Gentile churches which had felt the power of the new 
spiritual exaltation and enjoyed ‘ distributions of the Holy 
Spirit ’ is sufficient evidence that paganism could be warmly 
religious without being conspicuously moral or even while 
flagrantly immoral. The reader of Apuleius’ Metamor- 
phoses—the best single textbook for the study of the 
Mysteries—is impressed by the, to him, perplexing juxta- 
position of religious fervour and a sensuous and sensual 
imagination, Isiac salvation did not necessarily involve a 
transformation of character, 

It was from Judaism—pre-eminently the ethical religion 
of antiquity—that Christianity inherited its lofty ethical 
ideal.1_ Judaism was shocked at the gross sins of paganism, 
especially those of idolatry and of the flesh. Her own 
morality was not faultless, but it was a permanent challenge 
to surrounding paganism. In the sanctities of domestic life, 
the religious training of children, the duty of brotherly 
helpfulness, the relationship of the sexes, the dignity of 
manual labour, and in other respects the Diaspora became 
“a leader of the blind’ tothe Roman Empire. The morality 
of Judaism was such that, with the exception of trivialities 
of tradition and excessive biblicism, it could be transferred 
en bloc into Christianity. The poorer Jewish-Christian 
churches more than repaid the Gentile-Christian contri- 
butions in money by the wealth of their ethical heritage. 
The former were agitated by questions of legalism, while the 
latter were endeavouring to restrain libertinism by the 
adoption of the ethical code of Judaism and Christianity. 
Because Christianity sprang from Judaism its birth-mark was 
morality : 


“ The Jewish Christianity of Palestine trained by the Law 
was, so to speak, the backbone, which supported the moral 
conscience of the whole. . . . And the Judaistic agitation 
in his (Paul’s) churches, in spite of the injury that it did, still 


1 Cf. Wernle, Beginnings of Christianity, Eng. tr. I, p. 20 f. 


262 THE DEFECTS OF THE MYSTERIES 


achieved the result of laying more stress on the moral side 
of Christianity.” 4 


Jewish catechisms and textbooks were adopted by Chris- 
tianity and incorporated in Christian writings, Ethical 
superiority was a strong plank in the platform of the early 
apologists and Christian historians, and was not unobserved 
by heathen critics. The co-extension of morality with 
religion, to us a commonplace, was ‘not such to the Graeco- 
Roman age. Christianity made it a commonplace: it took 
up the ethical task so well begun by the Greek philosophers 
and by the religion of Israel. One cannot say that Chris- 
tianity has yet completed the moral education of the 
West, but Christianity has made it impossible that a man 
should any more be regarded as religious whose conduct 
is inconsistent with his profession. It has enabled us to 
unite the subjective and the objective aspects of religion ; 
to rejoice alike in the raptures of the communion of saints 
and in the exaltation of personal communion with the 
Father of our spirits; to balance the centrifugal and the 
centripetal forces of the soul. 

IV. Aristotle shrewdly detected a fatal defect in the Mys- 
teries when he said, ‘ It is not necessary that the initiates 
learn anything but that they should receive impressions 
and be brought into a suitable frame of mind,’ i.e. their 
vagueness * and excessive emotionalism, which was accom- 
panied by a cramping traditionalism. The Mysteries made 
their appeal to feeling primarily rather than to the moral 
loyalties and spiritual perceptions. Of this there is abund- 
ant evidence.* Stobaeus‘ has preserved a fragment of 
Themistios (Plutarch ?) which compares death with initiation 
thus : 


‘Then [in death] the soul undergoes an experience like 


1 Dobschiitz, Christian Life, Eng. tr. p. 172, cf. also p, 139. 

2 Cf. Lobeck, p. 113 ff. ; Anrich, p. 32 ff. 

3 Cf. Anrich, p. 33; Hepding, p. 195 ff. 

4 Floril. 120-28 (Meinike, 107)|; cf. Macchioro, Orf.e Paol. p. 128 ff.; 
cf. well-known passage of Dio Chrysostom, Or. XII. 202 M., de Arnim, I. 


163, 33. 


VAGUENESS OF THE MYSTERIES 263 


that of those receiving initiation into the great Mysteries. 
Wherefore the correspondence of word to word and act to act 
in dying and being initiated. First of all, wanderings and 
painful tortuous ways, and certain uneasy and endless 
courses in the dark; then, before the end, all the frightful 
things, fears, terrors, sweat and stupor. After which a 
certain marvellous light confronts it, and pure places and 
meadows receive it, with voices and choral dances and the 
most august solemnities of sacred sounds and holy sights. 
Amid this the man, perfect now and initiated, becomes free 
and goes round, liberated and crowned, performing the rites ; 
he consorts with holy and pure men, beholding here the 
uninitiated crowd of the living uncleansed and trodden 
under by himself in much mud and darkness, and, through 
fear of death, persisting in their evil in disbelief of the bliss 
of yonder world.’ 


‘ As those who are being initiated,’ says Plutarch,! ‘ approach 
each other at first with confusion and shoutings, but when.. 
the holy things are being performed and exposed they give 
attention with shuddering and silence, so the beginner in 
philosophy will at first observe much confusion, but, on com- 
ing to closer acquaintance and seeing the great light, as when 
shrines are opened, he will assume another character and 
maintain silence and awe will hold him’; and Pseudo- 
Demetrius ? affirms ‘ the Mysteries are delivered in allegories 
to strike terror and awe.’ This chiaroscuro, which neither 
invited nor permitted definition, adapted the Mysteries to 
the most varied tastes by an elasticity of interpretation which 
could make them mean anything to the participant : it lent 
them the attractiveness which hangs round Theosophy and 
occultism. The disparate, the obsolete, the symbolic, stood 
in pacific juxtaposition. 


“The hazy ideas of the Oriental priests enabled every- 
one to see in them the phantoms he was pursuing. The 
individual imagination was given ample scope, and the 
dilettante men of letters rejoiced in moulding these 
malleable doctrines at will. They were not outlined 


1 Quom., qui suos in virt. sent. prof. 82 E. 
2 Walz, Rhet. Graeci, 1X. 47. 


264 THE DEFECTS OF THE MYSTERIES 


sharply enough nor were they formulated with sufficient 
precision to appeal to the multitude. The gods were every- 
thing and nothing: they got lost in a sfumato.” } 


But the mind cannot long live in a fog. What may be 
interpreted as anything may mean nothing. Intuition is 
liable to be called to give account of its activities, and 
psychopathic states to be subjected to cold scrutiny. Rites 
may be for a time more important than speculation, but 
speculation has a way of entering unbidden and causing 
trouble. Mythology may usurp the place of reflection, but 
only fora season. No religion can permanently take refuge 
in the glamour of vagueness and fluidity of conception and 
uncorrelated elements.?. Socrates had correctly gauged the 
emotional inlets of inspiration and revelation when he so 
truthfully affirmed, ‘ The greatest of our blessings come to us 
through mania, provided it is a gift of God,’ * and ‘ Madness 
coming from God is superior to sanity of human origin.’ 
Well might the Alexandrine father,‘ with his sympathy 
for the mystic-gnostic type of religion, appeal to his con- 
temporaries, ‘ Cleanse yourselves from custom by sprinkling 
with the drops of truth,’ comparing the new mysteries, 
‘O truly holy Mysteries! O flawless light! my way is 
lighted with torches to contemplate the heavens and God: 
in initiation I become holy. The Lord is the hierophant 
who seals while illuminating his communicant.’® 

A necessary corollary to the vagueness of the Mysteries 
was their weakness intellectually or theologically, a defect 
which did not escape one of their strongest protagonists.° 
Sooner or later criticism is turned upon faith, but a religion 
rooted in the spiritual nature of man has nothing to fear 
but rather much to welcome from “man’s meddling 
intellect.” From the beginning their intellectual inferiority 

1 Cumont, Rel. orient. Eng. tr. p. 88, 2nd ed. p. 132. 

2 “ Fog is religion’s vital breath in this period ’’ (Glover, Progress, p. 323), 
who laments “‘ Fancy, ritual, mysticism, unsound science, are triumphant 
for the time and are united in a tremendous campaign against truth and 
science’”’ (p. 320 f.). 

3 Phaedrus, 244 A. D. S Tbe (22041)< 

4 Clem, Alex. Protr. 10, 99. 6 Julian, Ep. 52. 


WEAK THEOLOGICALLY 265 


was apparent to the educated, who had recourse to the 
religious-philosophic systems. The Mysteries never secured 
the services of Greek philosophy so fully and so loyally as 
did Christianity, and could not bear its solvent properties 
upon their faith. Hence as a rule an earnest man had to 
choose between the vague Mysteries and formulated Greek 
thought. Consequently, there were two main currents 
to one or other of which the efforts made to answer the 
intellectual curiosity and satisfy the yearnings of unhappy 
souls belonged : 


“Those whose interests were primarily intellectual, or, 
at all events, demanded a theology which was intellectually 
acceptable, were strongly influenced by the metaphysics of 
the Neo-Platonists and the ethics of the Stoics. In them 
they seemed to find a reasonable explanation of the universe, 
a ‘ Weltanschauung ’ which corresponded to facts, andarule 
of life which satisfied the conscience and seemed to offer a 
lasting happiness. On the other hand, those whose interest 
was chiefly religious, in the narrower sense of the word, were 
attracted by the Oriental Mysteries.’’ } 


As the Mysteries made advances to thinking men 
there arose apologists like Apuleius, Celsus, Porphyry, 
Iamblichus, Proclus, and Julian, who attempted to work 
out a theology to justify the claims of these religions. To 
our great loss for an historical appreciation of the ancient 
world only a fragment of this pagan apologetic has sur- 
vived. The notable essay of Plutarch on Isis and Osiris 
is rejected by Egyptologists * as a trustworthy document 
of the religion of the Nile. This apologetic and allegorical 
treatise is a fusion of Platonic speculation on a rather 
uncertain historical basis with Egyptian mythology. The 
Egyptian cult is seen through the eyes of the syncretistic 
Alexandrian medium in which naturalism, zoolatry 
(totemism), and magic are forced by allegorical exegesis 
to yield a theology acceptable to the Greek mind. Plutarch 


1 Lake, The Earlier Epp. of St. Paul, 2nd ed. p. 40; Stewardship, p. 74. 
* Cf. P. D, Scott-Moncrieff, De Iside et Os. in J.H S.’09, XXIX, p. 79 ff. 


266 THE DEFECTS OF THE MYSTERIES 


clearly aims to prove that the doctrines of Egypt are 
consonant with the advancing thought of his day.1 Isis 
appears as a mother of sorrows, a goddess of benign 
sympathy, and Osiris ‘‘ passes into the eternal Love and 
Beauty, pure, passionless, remote from any region of change 
or death, unapproachable in his ethereal splendour, save, 
as in moments of inspired musing, we may faintly touch 
him as in a dream.’”’? All that devotion and philosophy 
could do was done by Plutarch for the Mysteries. And yet 
in— 


‘« Spite of the radiant mists of amiability which he diffused 
over these Egyptian gods, till the old myths seem capable 
of every conceivable explanation, and everything a symbol 
of everything else, and all is beautiful and holy, the foolish 
and indecent old stories remain a definite and integral part 
of the religion, the animals are still objects of worship and 
the image of Osiris stands in its original naked obscenity.” * 


The Oriental gorgeousness of colour, the strained rhetoric, 
the wild fantasy, and the surcharge of mysticism character- 
izing the second-century romance of Apuleius cannot conceal 
the religious enthusiasm with which he describes his partici- 
pation in the sacraments of Isis and Serapis, nor blind us 
to the psychological effects produced. The glowing emo- 
tional language of the eleventh book of the Metamorphoses 
impresses the reader as a powerful plea of this prophet of 
paganism ‘ on behalf of Mysteries dear to him. 

Plotinus repeatedly illustrates® the purification of the 
soul in its ascent from the World of Sense to the World 
of Spirit, the Ogdoad, by language drawn from the Mysteries. 
Porphyry held that the Mysteries presented in symbolism 


1 In ch. 8 he contends that there is nothing irrational, mythical, nor 
anything prompted by superstition in the rites, but that they serve ethical 
and useful ends, or rest on historical or physical grounds. 

2 Dill, Rom. Soc. p. 575. 

3 Glover, Conflict, p. I11. 

4 Cf. P. Monceaux, Apulée Magicien in Rev. de Deux Mondes, LXXXV, 
Pp. 571-608. 

5 E.g. Enn. 1. 6, 7. 


APOLOGISTS OF THE MYSTERIES 267 


and action the deepest truths of Platonism. Iamblichus 
defended the Mysteries against the charge of obscenity and 
absurdity levelled against them, and with eloquent passion 
appealed to the edifying contemplation of their blessed 
symbols on the soul.1 Reference may be made to Julian’s 
discussion *? of ‘the myths adapted to initiation,’ and his 
advice ‘ to secure initiation into all the Mysteries.’ Proclus 
maintained that the philosophical doctrines (chiefly of 
Platonism) are of the same content as the mystic revelations, 
that philosophy in fact borrowed from the Mysteries, 
from Orphism through Pythagoras, from whom Plato 
borrowed. 

Christianity, by construing under the forms of reason 
what had first been vouchsafed to faith, stood the test of 
criticism which so often resulted in the evaporation of the 
vague ideas of ancient Mysteriology. It had nothing to 
fear, but rather much to gain, by the application of enquiry. 
It possessed its symbols, but they were simple and inoffensive. 
It is true that Celsus* ridiculed Christianity as a peasant 
religion: ‘ Let no one with education approach, none wise, 
none intelligent—such things we deem evil. But if there 
is anyone ignorant, stupid, lacking culture, or a fool, let 
such come with boldness,’ and ‘let us hear what kind 
of people these Christians invite. Everyone who is a 
sinner, unintelligent, or a fool, or in brief any wretch, such 
will the Kingdom of God receive. Now whom do you call 
a sinner but the wicked, the thief, the house-breaker, the 
poisoner, the sacrilegious, the spoiler of the dead ? whom 
else would you invite for a company of brigands ?’ Lucian 
mocked Christianity as the cult of a ‘ gibbeted sophist.’ 
The greatest of pagan philosophers in the Christian era, 
Plotinus, did not deign to mention the new way. To the 
noble Antonine emperor the new faith was ‘ sheer obstinacy.’ 
Porphyry, an even keener critic than Celsus, with all his 
respect for Jesus, poured scorn on Christian preaching, 
especially on the magical effects claimed for Baptism‘ 


1 De Myst. I. 12. 3 Con. Celsum, III. 44; 59. 
2 Oratio, VII. 4 In Macarius Magnes, IV. 19. 


268 THE DEFECTS OF THE MYSTERIES 


and the Eucharist, though its chief offence lay in the doctrine 
of the Incarnation * which contravened all philosophical 
ideas about the relation of spirit and matter, God and the 
world. Paul avers that not many wise accept the Gospel : 
it is true, too, that Christianity made its first strides among 
the lower classes. Some Christian apologists were misguided 
enough to attempt to commend the new religion by asserting 
“It is believable because it is absurd ; it is sure because it is 
impossible.’ ‘ It is true, too, that the Christian protagonists, 
instead of planting themselves firmly on the divine person- 
ality of Jesus, sometimes betook themselves to the outposts 
of such propositions as the Virgin Birth, miracles, exorcisms 
of Jesus, alleged fulfilment of prophecy, the axiomatic 
infallibility of Scripture with the inviolability of dogmata, the 
imminent Parousia of their Lord, the corporeity of the 
Resurrection, on which they exposed themselves unneces- 
sarily to attack, and on which the emphasis altered with the 
passing centuries. Others there were who ‘ neither wished 
to give nor to receive a reason for their faith,’ and who 
invited converts with ‘Don’t examine, only believe.’ § 
But this is not all the truth. It was only natural that 
Christianity, as a religion of Redemption, should be more 
readily accepted by the downtrodden classes, among whom 
conservatism was less hampering; but at no time was 
Christianity merely a peasant religion. It satisfied the heart 
and mind of the same subtle thinker who declared that not 
many wise had accepted ‘the offence of the Cross’; it 
appealed to cultured minds like those of the Fourth 
Evangelist, the author of Hebrews or the author of the 
graceful Epistle to Diognetus. The Christian apologists 
proved equal to expounding the fundamental Christian 
truths in the language of Greek philosophy. Under the 
Antonines a vast apologetic literature was published by 

1 Ib, III. 15. 2 Ib. IV. 22. 

3 Cf. Deissmann, Das Christentum u.d. Unteren Schichten. ‘ We see 
them in private houses, wool-carders, cobblers, fullers, the most uneducated 
and peasants, who dare not open their mouths in the presence of their 


elder and wiser masters ’ (Celsus, in Origen, Con. Celsuwm, III. 55; cf. 44). 
4 Tert. De Carne Christi, 5. 5 C. Celsum, I. 9. 


AND OF CHRISTIANITY 269 


writers like Quadratus, Aristides, Tatian, Justin, Athena- 
goras, Theophilus, Melito, Apollinarius, and Minucius Felix. 
Justin retained after his conversion the philosopher’s cloak 
for his Christian propaganda, in which he won his double 
title ‘philosopher and martyr.’ He endeavoured to 
vindicate the truth of Christianity mainly by appealing to , 
the morality of its adherents, the proof from prophecy, 
and the simplicity and dignity of the Christian worship. 
Tatian will not surrender philosophy to unbelievers: ‘Our 
philosophy is older than that of the Greeks,’ and ‘ rich and 
poor among us pursue philosophy,’! even old women and 
youths. Later apologists took up the battle for education 
in the Church, chiefly Origen and Clement. Origen boldly 
accepts his opponent’s contention against a faith without 
enquiry : ‘We should follow reason and a rational guide,’ 
and he claims that, without speaking arrogantly, there 
is at least as much enquiry among Christians as elsewhere.” 
More striking still is Clement’s defence of the rights of 
philosophic enquiry in Christian doctrine and his assertions 
of the benefits accruing from its application. In inviting 
his countrymen to come to ‘the all-sufficient Physician of 
humanity,’ * he invited them likewise to ‘ the genuinely true 
philosophy’‘: ‘It is impossible to find without having 
sought, or to have sought without examining, or to have 
examined without analysing and asking questions with a 
view to lucidity.’ Philosophy was to the Greeks the 
preparatory discipline for the Gospel which the Law proved 
to the Jews.’ Since philosophy makes men virtuous it must 
be the work of God. No one ever more cordially welcomed 
enquiry upon faith than this generously educated Greek 
father, to whom the true Christian was the true Gnostic. 
None, except the Fourth Evangelist, exemplified better 
how Christianity may bring forth things new and old, 
and while borrowing transmute. ‘One indeed is the 
way of Truth, but into it, as into an ever-flowing river 


1 Adv. Graecos, 31 f. \ 4 Stvom. VIII. t. 


2 C. Celsum, I. 99. POV ELT ol 5; elaro; 
8 Paed. I. 6.2. 


270 THE DEFECTS OF THE MYSTERIES 


streams from everywhere are confluent.’ Greek and non- 
Greek speculation was a ‘ torn-off fragment of eternal Truth.’* 
Lactantius likewise recognized the strength of Christianity 
when he maintained that the true religion and true philo- 
sophy are identical. 

No other religion in such a short time called forth such a 
theological literature in which its adherents made explicit 
the truths implicit in their faith. This, of course, produced 
such a crop of heresy as alarmed Church leaders—Gnosticism, 
Docetism, Montanism. It was in the Gnostic controversy 
that Christianity was brought into closest contact with 
philosophy in the ancient world, by which it gained through 
a clearer formulation of its faith. . 

Christianity offered a more profound and spiritual message 
than the Mysteries to the theosophic mind of the Orient, 
the speculative mind of Greece, and the legalist mind of 
Rome. However brilliant the allegorical exegesis of the 
Mysteries, however remote their boasted antiquity, however 
imposing their authority, however impressive and often » 
beautiful their symbolism, there remained at last in the 
Mysteries but evanescent myths, elusive of a theology, and 
legends repulsive to the moral sense, whereas the Christian 
apologist could appeal to truth intelligible because enshrined 
in the Word made flesh in the Divine Humanity. 


11,5. ig hel Bah we 


CHAPTER VII 


THE VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY + 


Aéyet “Inoots éornv & péow Tod Kédcpmov Kal ev capkl GPOnv avrois. 
OXYRHYNCHUS LOGION. 


‘Erecta sermonis libertate proclama: evpijxayev ovyxalpomev.” 
Minucivs Fe.ix, De Err. Prof. Rel. 11. 9. 


‘Totus Veritas fuit.,—Trert. De Carne Christi, V. 
— oon 


THE appearance of Christianity attracted little attention for 
some time and received but scanty notice in contemporary 
pagan or Jewish literature. Seneca, before whose brother’s 
tribunal the Jews brought Paul, makes no reference to 
the new faith which we know was rapidly spreading in 
his day. Suetonius? refers to Jesus by a misconception 
as instigator of a riot in Rome. Tacitus,? writing early in 
the second century, speaks of the rise of this ‘ baneful 
superstition (exitiabilis superstitio)’ and of the death of its 
originator under Pontius Pilate. 

The disputed passage in Josephus ‘ concerning Jesus may 
now be accepted as authentic. Lucian makes mockery of the 


1 Cf. A. Dieterich’s instructive essay Dev Untergang dey antiken Religion 
in Kl. Sch. pp. 449-539; J. Geffcken, Der Ausgang des griech-rém. 
Heidentums in N. Jahrb. f. d. Klas, Alt,’18. XLI, pp. 93-124 ; The Dissolu- 
tion of Paganism, by G. Santayana in Interpretations of Poetry and Religion, 
PP. 49-75; The Triumph of Christianity, by S. Angus in Review and 
Expositor, XVIII, July and October ’21 ; Lecky, Hist. of European Morals, 
vol. I, ch. III; Glover, Progress in Religion, ch. XV; Renan, Raisons 
de la Victoive du Christianisme, chs. XXXI-IV of Marc Auréle ; Harnack, 
Mission and Exp. bks. II and III; Mackintosh, The Originality of the 
Christian Message, ch. V1; McGiffert, Influence of Christianity in the Roman 
Emp. (Harv. Th. Rev. January ’09); C. H. Moore, Religious Thought of the 
Greeks, chh X; C. W. Emmet, Primitive Christianity and its Competitors 
(Modern Churchman, XII, pp. 316-26); V. Macchioro, Paganesimo e 
Cristianesimo in L’Evangelio, pp. 63-94. 

2 ‘Judaeos impulsore Chresto . . . Roma expulit’ (Claud. 25). 

3 Annales, XV. 44. 

4 Antig. Jud. XVIII. 3, 3; cf. A.Slijpen in Mnemosyne N.S.’14, pp. 96-100. 

271 


272 THE VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 


‘gibbeted. sophist,’ and the noble Aurelius, in his one 
explicit reference 1 to Christianity, terms it ‘ sheer obstinacy.’ 

It was the Jews who first raised the alarm against the new 
faith so akin to, and yet so different from, the parent faith ; 
it was they too who both in Palestine and in the Diaspora 
inaugurated the first persecutions. At first the Jews 
themselves viewed the new way as merely another sect 
or a prophetic revival within Judaism. The Apostles at 
Jerusalem for a time evidently took the same view and 
continued to live as Jews while proclaiming Jesus as Messiah. 
Soon the implications of the new teaching became apparent 
to the Jews, and the difficult questions raised by the Gentile 
mission brought home not only to Paul but to the Jewish 
authorities the fact that if Christianity was true Judaism 
was doomed, Christ being ‘the end of the Law.’ The 
conservative elements in Judaism then attempted to stamp 
out the new heresy, for which purpose they called in the aid 
of the secular arm. Christianity, repudiated by Judaism, 
became an ‘unlicensed religion,’ which for a generation 
had grown and spread, as Tertullian says, sub umbraculo 
licitae Judacorum religionis. It must have come as a 
surprise to the vigilant Roman authorities to discover that 
a new religion, with apparently no past, should suddenly 
appear upon the stage professing to be a universal religion 
and disputing the imperial cult. As a result of the great 
fire in Rome in July 64 Nero, to dissipate the rumour that 
he was the incendiary, set on foot the first imperial persecu- 
tion ; henceforth Christianity attracted increasing attention, 
hostile and friendly. All the persecutions and police super- 
vision of the imperial government were as futile to arrest 
the spread of Christianity as Herod’s slaughter of the 
Innocents had been to prevent the teaching from which it 
was born. Christianity waxed stronger while opposed by 
the State, by other popular religions, by its parent faith, 
by the science and the philosophies of the time. 

The permanence of Christianity is evidence that its victory 
was due mainly to spiritual means, not merely to the defects 


DG ie 


ALLEGED CAUSES OF ITS VICTORY 273 


of the Mystery-Religions but to its own intrinsic qualities. 
By its possession of the Spirit of Christ it was able to quicken 
and transform the masses who entered it in ignorance or 
from ulterior motives. To Christianity, as to other religions, 
many adherents were attracted by what could not be called 
religious motives. Some saw in Christianity a greater 
magical potency for the performance of exorcism and 
_thaumaturgy ; some accepted out of dread of the judg- 
ment threatened at the imminent Parousia ; some sought an 
earthly paradise ; some in an age of theosophy coveted 
the pneumatic charismata. It was not the faith of such 
adherents that made Christianity mighty. 

It is instructive to note the causes assigned by historians 
for the victory of Christianity. For example, Gibbon? 
attributes it to (1) the enthusiasm of the early Christians; 
(2) their belief in immortality, with future rewards and 
punishments ; (3) miracles; (4) the high ethical code of its 
first professors; (5) efficient organization on imperial pat- 
terns. It is more surprising that Merivale* should miss 
the true secret in his enumeration of the four factors: (x) the 
external evidence of the apparent fulfilment of prophecy and 
miracles; (2) internal evidence as satisfying the spiritual needs 
of the empire; (3) the pure lives and heroic deaths of 
Christians ; (4) the temporal success with which Christianity 
was crowned under Constantine. With more truth John 
Stuart Blackie * says: ‘‘ Christianity addressed itself to the 
world with the triple advantage of a reasonable dogma, a 
tremendous moral force, and an admitted historical basis.’’ 
Renan, discussing the question in some readable chapters of 
his Marc Auréle, affirms, “It was by the new discipline of life 
which it introduced into the world that Christianity con- 
quered,’’‘ and elsewhere’: ‘There is in the teaching of 
Christ a new spirit and a stamp of originality’’ (cachet 
original). A French Modernist, A. Loisy, in his Les 


1 Decline and Fall, ch. XV. 

2 Conversion of the Rom. Emp. p. viii ff. 
3 Day-book of J. S. Blackie, p. 27. 

£ P. 562. 

’ Etudes d’Hist. Relig. p. 188 


19 


274 THE VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 


'\\Mystéves paiens et le Mystére chrétien,! discovers the 
superiority of Christianity in its emphasis on monotheism, 
involving the personality of God, and in its doctrine of the 
Incarnation. 

Lecky* points out that Christianity combined more 
distinct elements of power and attraction than any other 
religion, such as universalism, a sympathetic worship, a 
noble system of ethics, an ideal of compassion. ‘“‘ The chief 
cause of its success was the congruity of its teaching with 
the spiritual nature of mankind. It was because it was 
true to the moral sentiments of the age, because it 
represented faithfully the supreme type of excellence to which 
men were then tending, because it corresponded with their 
religious wants, aims, emotions, because the whole spiritual 
being could thus expand and expatiate under its influence, 
that it planted its roots so deeply in the hearts of men.” 
Reinach* attributes its victory and permanence to its 
simplicity and purity, while Cumont‘ views its victory 
merely as “‘l’aboutissement d’une longue évolution des 
croyances.”’ With more historic justification than these 
last two writers, McGiffert maintains: ‘‘ Ancient Christianity 
won its victory chiefly because it had far more of the elements 
of power and permanence, combined a greater variety of 
attractive features, and satisfied a greater variety of needs 
than any other system... its victory in the Roman 
Empire was fairly earned by sheer superiority.”’ 5 

Though Christian apologists appealed to the number and 
nature of Christian miracles, the success of Christianity was 
not due to anything which was merely of contemporary 


1 P. 343 ff. In the Hibbert J. X, p. 64, Loisy says that Christianity 
conquered because “it had the advantage over them [the Mysteries] of 
a firmer doctrine of God and of immortality ; of a divine Saviour more 
living, nearer the heart, and possessed of a place in history ; of a stronger 
unity in belief and in social organization.”’ 

2 History of European Morals, vol. I, ch. III (The Conversion of Rome), 
pp. 388-9 in copyright ed. of 1911. 

3 Orpheus, p. 108. 

4 Rel. ory. p. xxiv; cf. also the paragraph in Aust, pp. 115-16. 

5 Influence of Christianity in the Rom. Emp. p. 43; cf. C. H. Moore, 
Relig. Thought of the Greeks, pp. 292 f., 356 ff. 


CIRCUMSTANCES FAVOURABLE TO CHRISTIANITY 275 


value, or to what could be put forth by other religions, 
but, as we shall see later, to that miracle of miracles, the 
Personality of Jesus. The conversion of Constantine merely 
completed the material and political success of Christianity 
and issued in an alliance which was fraught with more bane 
than blessing for Christianity. The triumph of Christianity 
was more than the drawing to a focus of a long evolution of 
beliefs, more than merely the culmination of the Oriental 
penetration of the West. Christianity did not win because 
the East was mainly for Christ while the West was for Mithra. 
Nor did Christianity win merely because it was adopted by 
the Hellenic spirit by which its dogmata were defended in 
philosophic terminology, and by which it was supplied 
with a reasoned theology necessary to the permanence of a 
religion. Celsus! rightly maintained that the Greeks excelled 
in ‘criticizing, establishing, and bringing to bear upon 
practical life the discoveries of the non-Greeks,’ who were 
admitted to excel the Greeks in ability to ‘ discover dogmata.’ 
It is true that Mithraism was doomed to failure largely 
because it could not win the allegiance of the Greeks,’ 
but it is also true that other contemporary religious systems 
failed in spite of Greek advocacy. That this marvellously 
gifted race decided to consecrate its genius to Christ was 
a large—perhaps the largest—factor contributing to the 
success of ancient Christianity, but it was not the supreme 
factor. Neither, as is sometimes represented, did Christi- 
anity drive its competitors off the field by its aggressive 
syncretistic tendencies and a capacity for borrowing lavishly 


| 


i 


and assimilating organically. The promise of its victory j 


was assured before it reached its most syncretistic stages 
in the third and subsequent centuries. The advantages of 
the syncretistic method did not conceal from the Christian 
apologists the latent perils. Tertullian? uttered his pro- 
test : ‘ Viderint qui Stoicum et Platonicum et dialecticum 


1 C. Celsum, I. 2. 

2 Because Mithraism did not lay hold of Hellenism “ the historian at once 
sees that the former (Mithraism) has to perish, and the latter (Christianity) 
survive’ (Harnack, Mission and Expansion, II. p. 318.) 

3 De Praes. Haer. 7. 


276 THE VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 


Christianismum protulerint.’ Christianity won because of 
what it was, because of what Jesus was. This does not deny 
a long historic process of preparation for the fulness of 
the times. There had been a real preparation, both 
negatively and positively, by the Mystery-Religions, the 
Greek religious philosophies, Judaism, and the Roman 
empire, and by the terrible thirst for love (the amabam 
amare of Augustine) of dying paganism. The Mysteries had 
brought men together in those religious associations which 
were the harbingers of the house-churches of primitive 
Christianity and had ready to hand for the new religion 
an organization and system of administration. The Mys- 
teries, both Greek and Oriental, had created a favourable 
milieu for Christianity by making religion a matter of 
personal conviction; they had made familiar the con- 
sciousness of sin and the need of a redemption; and by 
their salvationist propaganda they disposed men to lend 
a ready ear to the Christian proclamation of Jesus as 
Saviour ; they had denationalized gods and men in aiming 
at the brotherhood of mankind; they had stimulated 
cravings for immortality which they could only inadequately 
satisfy ; they had made men zealous propagandists by laying 
upon them the duty of the diffusion of their faith ; they had 
fostered monotheism by making their patron deity the 
representative of the Divine Unity, or by the syncretistic 
identification of their deity with the still living deities of 
polytheism, or by that solar monotheism which concentrated 
adoration on the one source of life and light. 

There were also many circumstances quite favourable to 
the advancement of Christianity. Alexander and Caesar 
and Augustus had prepared the way of the Lord. Greek and 
Greek-Oriental philosophies had revealed the needs and 
aspirations of the human spirit. Plato and Posidonius and 
Philo had pointed men to Heaven as the homeland of the 
soul. The Greeks had furnished the missionaries of the Cross 
with a world-language. In its inception Christianity had a 
unique advantage in being permitted to take firm root under 
the protection of the veligio licita of Judaism. Inits mission- 


HISTORIC PREPARATION 277 


ary activity its way was everywhere prepared by the 
preachers and teachers of the synagogue. Be it said that no 
religion ever facilitated the path of another as did Judaism 
that of Christianity—a debt sometimes grudgingly acknow- 
ledged by early Christian anti-Semitism. The Jew was 
ubiquitous ; the synagogue had in every centre prepared 
the most serious minds of heathenism—the ‘ God-fearers,’ 
who were the first to abandon the Synagogue to enter the 
Ecclesia. 


“To the Jewish mission which preceded it, the Christian 
mission was indebted, in the first place, for a field tilled all 
over the empire; in the second place, for religious com- 
munities already formed everywhere in the towns ; thirdly, 
for what Axenfeld calls ‘ the help of materials ’ furnished by 
the preliminary knowledge of the Old Testament, in addition 
to catechetical and liturgical materials which could be 
employed without much alteration ; fourthly, for the habit 
of regular worship and the control of private life ; fifthly, 
for an impressive apologetic on behalf of monotheism, 
historical teleology, and ethics ; and, finally, for the feeling 
that self-diffusion was a duty. The amount of this debt 
is so large that one might venture to claim the Christian 
mission as a continuation of Jewish propaganda.”’ ! 


Having made due acknowledgment of all these historic 
facts, let us consider the main differential features and 
factors, and the mode of diffusion which ensured Christianity 
its success and permanence. 


I. Irs INTOLERANCE 


Narrow indeed was the gate that admitted into the new 
Society, and broad that of admission into other religions. 
In the matter of intolerance Christianity differed from all 
pagan religions, and surpassed Judaism ; in that respect it 
stood in direct opposition to the spirit of the age. It was 
emphatic in its positive differential doctrines and uncom- 
promising in its stern protests: it had “inherited from 
Judaism the courage of its disbeliefs.’”’* Never was there a 


1 Harnack, Mission and Exp. I, p. 15. 
2 Murray, Four Stages, p. 178. / 


278 THE VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 


more tolerant age than that in which Christianity appeared. 
As a result of the spread of Greek thought, which had always 
been that of the layman and never subjugated to sacerdotal 
control, the break-up of the city-state, and the regnant 
cosmopolitanism, men had learned to respect each other’s 
opinions. Racial and religious barriers had been thrown 
down. The most exclusive of races, the Jews, had for 
centuries played a part in world-history ; particularly was 
the Diaspora generous in its outlook on the surrounding 
world. Men were everywhere exchanging religious views. 
Syncretism was the religious hall-mark of the time. Through- 
out the empire were spread religious communities in which 
men of different races met. There was no clear line of demar- 
cation among the foreign cults, which showed a marked 
hospitality in religion. Different gods agreed to be housed 
in the same temple ; the same priest might officiate for half 
a dozen deities.1_ Men were willing to try every religion and 
philosophy in the field. It was now as fashionable to owe 
allegiance to the gods of the Nile, Syria, Persia, Samothrace, 
Greece, and Rome, as it had in the previous epoch been to 
acknowledge only one national pantheon. Polytheism is 
naturally tolerant, and the spirit of the age only increased 
religious tolerance 

The Jews stood aloof. Their uncompromising monotheism 
and the Law rendered them conspicuously intolerant as 
compared with the adherents of the Mystery-Religions. They 
would accept no compromise on the question of the imperial 
cult, Sabbath-keeping, or on such rites as appeared essential 
to the integrity of their faith. But Judaism was able to 
temporize to a certain extent. Within it there were degrees 
of piety from that of the Pharisees to that of ‘ the people of 
the land.’ Judaism desired to influence the maximum 
number compatible with its tenets. Those who would enter 
into the full benefits of the Covenant must submit to 
circumcision and undertake the obligations of the Mosaic 
law with superadded traditions. There was a much larger 
class of adherents who refused to break with paganism ; 

t CECT Le VICE ETO: 


ITS INTOLERANCE 279 


these were encouraged to attach themselves to the synagogue 
and a minimum of requirements was imposed upon them. 
Christianity intensified the intolerance of the parent faith and 
sternly set its face against the tolerance in religious affairs 
which commenced with the Persians, was first made popular 
by Alexander, and became the settled policy of the Roman 
Empire.!. It frowned upon the hospitality of the competing 
cults. “‘ Christianity stands proudly aloof from the throng 
of the thias1 ; and the only likeness to them which she will 
acknowledge is the likeness which an angel of light might 
bear to the spirit of darkness.’’? The rites of pagans were 
in her eyes performed to devils ; pagan worship was founded 
by demons and maintained in the interests of demons. To 
those who were in quest of salvation and testing each scheme 
offered Christianity dared to say: ‘In no other is there 
salvation, for neither is there any other name under heaven 
that is given among men, wherein we must be saved.’ To 
those accustomed to the idea and practice of initiation into 
several Mysteries it declared: ‘You cannot drink the cup 
of the Lord and the cup of demons ; you cannot partake of 
the table of the Lord and the table of demons.’ To those 
who, according to the religious conceptions of the time, 
were seeking mediators, it declared ‘there is one God; 
also one Mediator between God and man, a man, Christ Jesus.’ 
To those accustomed to address the ‘ Lord Serapis’ or the 
Domina Isis or the Emperor as Dominus Christianity stoutly 
asseverated that ‘there is one Lord’ whose name is above 
every name. 

This intolerance and exclusiveness naturally drew much 
odium upon the new Society, which opposed the prevalent 
rapprochement of customs and cults. It heavily handi- 
capped it in competition with the syncretistic* Mystery- 


1 Cf. E. G. Hardy, Studies in Rom. Hist. ’06, chs. I-IX. 

2 Gardner, St. Paul, p. 94; cf. Boissier, I, p. 382 ff. 

3 In which one deity could order the erection of a shrine for another, as 
the Dea Caelestis of Carthage did for Mercury (Boissier, I, p. 387), or as 
the Greek Aesculapius honoured the deity of Doliche (C.J.L. III. 1614). 
Even the high-grade Fathers of Mithra might be Prophets of Isis (C.J.L. 

VI. 504, 846). 


280 THE VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 


Religions, but in the end proved the secret of its strength. 
Many a follower of ‘my Lord Serapis’ and of Isis, ‘ the 
Saviour of men,’! and of the Great Mother was turned away 
because he could not find the accustomed hospitality for 
his gods with this new faith. The Christian cult was an 
exclusive cult* which required every candidate to break 
with his past and separate himself from much of the social 
life because it was tainted with paganism. Christians 
attracted attention by their separation from the world ; 
they were of dyio.. They would not crown themselves 
with garlands on festal civic occasions. The story of St. 
John fleeing from the baths in Ephesus because Cerinthus 
entered is characteristic of the uncompromising spirit of 
Christianity. No Christian could imitate the tolerance 
indicated in such a sepulchral confession of faith as pater 
sacrorum summt invictt Mithrae, sacerdos Isidis, det Libert 
archibucolus,* or of the child-priest Aurelius Antonios,‘ 
‘priest of all the gods, of Bona Dea, the Great Mother, Diony- 
sos and Hegemon (Leader).’ This self-consciousness and 
exclusivism was ‘‘immensely imposing and impressive in 
that age of religious syncretism and easy tolerance of all 
sorts of divergent faiths. Here was a movement that 
claimed everything and granted nothing. Bitter hostility 
was aroused, of course, but also fanatical devotion.”’ § 

We may regret this hard intolerance of our primitive faith 
which sometimes did bare justice to its forerunners and 
competitors ; which from the second century turned fiercely 
upon Judaism as the latter had a century before excommuni- 
cated it ; which has left but few fragments of a vast liturgy 
and religious literature of paganism which would have been 
of immense value to students of the history of religion, and 
would have cast many a ray of light on the origins of our own 
faith ; which demolished holy places and beautiful temples 

1 dvdpagerepay in Invocation of Oxy. Pap. XI. 1380, 1. 55, and cwrepay, 
l.g1; cf. Isis Salutaris, C.I.L. 111. 2903; 4809. 

2 Cf. Bouché-Leclercqg, L’Intolérance religieux et politique, Pp: 140, 

SUG TEV Lasoo. 


4 7.G.S.I. 1449. 
5 McGiffert, p. 43. 


HISTORIC REASONS FOR INTOLERANCE 281 


such as the world shall never rear again. As we stand in 
awe amid some of these inspiring ruins we more regretfully 
bewail early Christian iconoclasm than the student of the 
Reformation does the blindness of our fathers who destroyed 
cathedrals and abbeys because these had been the centres 
of ecclesiastical abuses. But we shall less regret this 
intolerance of primitive Christianity when we reflect upon 
the nature and necessity of it, and upon the ability of 
Christianity to transmute what it saw fit to borrow from 
paganism. Tolerance too often results from indifference or 
indecision, but the intolerance of the Christian preachers 
was that of the conviction that they had found the all- 
comprehensive Truth. And in the welter of religions and 
philosophies intolerance was the most obvious, if not also 
the only sure, method of self-preservation. Judaism, on the 
one side, attempted to allure Christianity with the prestige 
of the Law, the memories of the fathers, and with usages 
hallowed from antiquity. Greek thought, on the other side, 
saw in Christianity immense possibilities of speculation and 
essayed to transform it into an eclectic philosophy in which 
the metaphysical would predominate over the spiritual. 
Again, the Mysteries, with their numerous clientele, welcomed 
Christianity as another religion of their own genus, offering 
hospitality to its Christ and to its rites. But the Holy 
Spirit, as the Christians termed the new source of power which 
they felt better than they could describe, warned the ‘ new 
way ’ of the perils of holding dalliance with other cults. The 
event justified them. The hospitality and syncretism of the 
competitors of Christianity, while greatly adding to their 
popularity, ultimately compassed their downfall. Together] 
with their loftier elements, that made for spirituality, they 
weighted themselves with rudiments of nature-worship, 
allying them with gross superstitions. Christianity would 
not stoop to conquer. It made claims of seemingly the most 
extravagant order, from which it would not abate one jot. 
Its exclusiveness preserved its integrity. It alone had the 
courage to be exclusive. Those who entered its fold entered 
under no delusions as to their connexion with their past. 


282 THE VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 


Its converts, required to surrender so much, came with a 
deeper conviction and with a warmer zeal for the diffusion 
of the truth. 

The cruel intolerance, political and theological, which 
mars so many pages of the history of the Church showed a 
failure to understand the-spirit of Jesus in His hatred of 
unreality and sin combined with such a marvellous love for 
the misguided. He supplemented the apparently harsh 
logion ‘ he that is not with Me is against Me,’ with ‘ he that is_ 
not against usisforus.’ Christianity has suffered much from 
the excess of this virtue of intolerance, which has often 
degenerated into unlovely bigotry. Lecky, after stating 
that there probably never existed upon earth a community 
whose members were bound to one another by a purer 
affection and which combined so felicitously an unflinching 
opposition to sin with a boundless love to the sinner, says, 
“There has, however, also never existed a community which 
displayed more clearly the intolerance that would necessarily 
follow its triumph.” ! Simultaneously ‘with its political 
triumph, it turned persecutor against pagan, Jew, and heretic. 
Catholic Christianity tried to exterminate heresy not merely 
by argument but by sword and flame. The repressive 
~ legislation of Theodosius, which by heavy penalties 
forbade the practice of any other religion than Christianity, 
the closing of the schools of philosophy at Athens by 
Justinian, the Albigensian crusades, the Dominican In- 
quisitions, the religious wars of the seventeenth century, 
the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity in Elizabethan 
England, the cruelties perpetrated upon the Anabaptists 
—these and such deeds are the debasement of that 
moral intolerance of apostolic preaching which never 
doubted Magna est veritas et praevalebit. The permanence 
and success of Christianity were not secured by the con- 
tentious Nicene and Athanasian Creeds, but by the simple 
New Testament creed, ‘ Jesus is Lord,’ which permitted no 
compromise. 

The relation of Christianity to the syncretism of the 

LeLOAT Ope aea. 


‘UNIVERSALITY OF CHRISTIANITY 283 


first three centuries! would carry us too far afield. While 
Christianity avoided the dangers of that syncretism which 
weakened its competitors it did not escape unscathed. It 
borrowed, but it transmuted. It baptized every idea or rite, 
whether borrowed from the Mysteries or from Judaism, into 
the name of Christ.2. It was receptive of the truth, but 
believed that its only Lord was the Way, the Reality, and the 
Life. Its attitude is best represented in the words of its 
greatest Apostle: ‘Whatever is true, whatever is venerable, 
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, 
whatever is of good report, if there is any virtue or any praise, 
consider these things.’ 

II. Christianity was the only genuinely universal religion 
which could without reservation declare that there is 
neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, bond nor free. It 
was, in Max Miiller’s phrase, “‘ the religion of Humanity.” 
It has been shown how Christianity united in a higher and 
comprehensive synthesis the social-ethical and individual- 
istic-mystic tendencies in religion, a task which rent the soul 
of Judaism. It was precisely on this question that ‘ those 
of the way ’ came into conflict with conservative Judaism ; 
the nationalistic principle yielded to the universalistic. Paul 
could say, ‘He is our peace, having made both one by 
breaking down the dividing partition.’ Herein the way of 


= 


Christianity had been prepared by the Mystery-Religions: 


and by Greek philosophy, especially Stoicism. If in its 
intolerance Christianity was diametrically opposed to the 
spirit of the age, in its universalism it was in line with the 
tendencies of a world-civilization. The Mystery-Religions 


1 “ Das Christentum ist eine synkretistische Religion. Starke religidse 
Motive, die aus der Fremde gekommen waren, sind in ihm erhalten und 
zur Verklarung gediehen, orientalische und hellenistische. Denn das ist 
das Charakteristische, wir diirfen sagen das Providentielle, am Christentum, 
dass es seine klassische Zeit in der weltgeschichtlichen Stunden erlebt hat, 
als es aus dem Orient in das Griechentum Uubertrat. Darun hat es Teil 
an beiden Welten. So stark auch spater das Hellenistische in ihm geworden 
ist, so ist das Orientalische, das ihm von Anfang an eignete, niemals ganz 
verschwunden’”’ (Gunkel, Z. religionsgesch. Verstdndnis des N.T., p. 95, 
with which cf. Dibelius, Sitzb. d. Heidelberger Akad. ’17, Abh. 4, p. 53). 

2 Cf. Gardner, Growth of Christianity, chs. II-VI. 


284 THE VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 


and religious philosophies, Jewish preaching and the 
Roman Empire, were all aiming at a universalism co-extensive 
with the cosmopolitan character of that time. The Mysteries 
succeeded most signally, but fell short of a comprehensive 
universalism in the exclusiveness by which their secrets could 
not be divulged to outsiders.1. Greek thought was united 
with Hebrew Revelation and Oriental mysticism to meet the 
needs of the day, which it did to a remarkable degree, but 
mostly for the cultivated classes. Jewish propaganda failed 
by persisting in making men Jews first. The Imperial cult 
was little more than a political device. Christianity 
surmounted all barriers. It had in its heroic days no 
disciplina arcani, no secret which could not be divulged 
to all; it did not pride itself on a Gnosis accessible to the 
few. Though strait was the gate the conditions of entry 
were such that all could comply therewith, and those 
conditions were not buried in a secret lore. 

No other religion could compete with Christianity in the 
scope and variety of its appeal and the comprehensiveness of 
its message. It admitted of diverse interpretations adapting 
it to every variety of temperament and racial outlook. It 
could be presented legally or mystically, in the homely 
terms of the Sermon on the Mount or in the subtlety of a 
metaphysical system. It could baptize into the name of its 
Lord everything that was of worth in the convert’s past 
paganism or Judaism. Its appeal was at once religious, 
social, philosophical, and ethical, so that it could satisfy 
the threefold demands made of a religion—social needs, 
personal solace, and justification of its dogmas.? _ 


‘“‘ Christianity made the double appeal, appealing on the 
one side as a religion with a practical message to every man, 
low or high, and on the other side as a philosophy, rivalling 
the great systems of antiquity, supplementing and correcting 
them, ‘and at the same time assimilating many of their most 


1 Lucian makes Demonax (11) justify his abstinence from the Mysteries 
on the ground that if they were bad he ought to have denounced them, and 
if good they should be revealed to all. 

2 Cf. Bussell, Christian Theology and Social Progress, p. 165. 


THE CHRISTIAN COMMONWEALTH 285 


persuasive features. No movement can spread rapidly and 
widely unless it appeals to the common man ; and no move- 
ment can establish itself firmly and permanently unless it 
wins the thinking classes, the intellectual leaders of the 
world. Christianity did both.’ 


Origen* had already remarked upon this excellence of 
Christianity in not ‘despising the populace’ but ‘ care- 
fully seeking to provide food for the great mass of men.’ 

The Christian Commonwealth into which men entered by 
one baptism into one Lord accomplished more for the world 
than did the Utopian Republic of Plato, with its class dis- 
tinctions and restrictions, or the Jewish conception of the 
Kingdom of God in which the premier place was assigned to 
the Jew, or the Cosmopolis of the Stoics, which stood near- 
est to Christianity in its levelling of all distinctions of race, 
sex, and culture, but remained only an ideal for lack of the 
personal ideal of Love to which Christianity could point. 

Jesus, by the Edict of Comprehension, as Seeley finely 
calls the Sermon on the Mount, made morality universal 
and constituted all men brothers under one Heavenly Father. 
“The words ‘ foreign ’ and ‘ barbarous ’ lost their meaning ; 
all nations and tribes were gathered within the pomoervum 
of the city of God ; and on the baptized earth the Rhine and 
Thames became as Jordan, and every sullen desert-girded 
settlement of German savages as sacred as Jerusalem.” * 
The idea of the brotherhood of man was no novelty intro- 
duced by Jesus. The idea had fascinated thinkers from at 
least the day when Socrates,‘ on being asked to which State 
he belonged, replied that he was a citizen of the world, and 
Diogenes, the Cynic lecturer, in reply to the same question,‘ 
stated that he was a ‘cosmopolitan.’ Hebrew prophecy 
had dreamed of the day when ‘ the God of the whole earth 

1 McGiffert, Ib. p. 45. 

2 C. Celsum, VII. 60. 

3 Ecce Homo, ch. XII. 

4 Epictetus, Disc. I. 9, 1; Cicero, Tusc. Disp. V. 37, 108: ‘Socrates 
quidem cum rogaretur cuiatem se esse diceret, mundanum inquit. Totius 


enim mundi se incolam et civem arbitrabatur.’ 
5 Diog. Laert. VI. 63. 


286 THE VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 


shall He be called,’ when all should look to Jerusalem as the 
religious centre and symbol of unity. Many factors had given 
emphasis to this feeling of a common humanity which 
demanded a universal religion. The Stoics made of it a 
religion, the loftiest element in which is the kinship between 
God and man in which all participate. ‘ Of His race are 
we.’ Epictetus dwells upon this inspiring thought. 
Descent from God should be more elevating than kinship 
with the emperor!; we are ‘relatives of God, and come from 
Him.’* The good man is the offspring of God.* Another 
bond of union was the all-pervading Logos. For the realiza- 
tion of brotherhood Stoic teachers recognized the need of 
love to eradicate selfishness: ‘In the State Love is God, a 
fellow-worker for the salvation of the city.’ * 

The religion of Jesus alone proved equal to the task of 
establishing a true sense of humanity, and did so by the 
introduction of a purely human and comprehensive principle 
of Love, which can be best described in Seeley’s phrase ‘‘ the 
enthusiasm of humanity,” a principle first exemplified in 
Jesus Himself, and from Him caught up by His disciples. 
Glover has truthfully said : 


“No other teacher dreamed that common men could 
possess a tenth part of the moral grandeur and spiritual 
power which Jesus elicited from them—chiefly by believing 
in them. Here, to anyone who will study the period, the 
sheer originality of Jesus is bewildering. This belief in men 
Jesus gave to His followers, and they have never lost it.’’ ° 


' It is no exaggeration to say that Christian love was a 

- new moral factor in the world. The Apostle Paul put love 

above all the gifts of the Spirit. Jesus’ love to His followers 

awakened a responsive love in them. Their love to Him 
produced an attitude of loyalty to a Person hitherto un- 

LE DUsCol 3y) Lisn9,- i. 

a LOL OS t-8 9,50, 


3 Seneca, De Prov. I. 
# Zeno, Arnim, Frag. Stoic. I. 263; cf. also Arnold, Rom. Stoicism, 


Pp. 275, 0. 14. 
5 Conflict of Religions, p. 130. 


CHRISTIAN FAITH A NEW FACTOR 287 


known in religion. His belief in the infinite moral and 
spiritual capacities of the most ordinary of mortals lent 
enthusiasm to their preaching. The results have vindicated 
Jesus’ optimism about human nature. ‘ The philanthropy 
of God our Saviour’ begot the all-pervading philanthropy 
of early Christianity which so characterized it in the eyes of 
outsiders. 


III. CHRISTIAN FAITH 


The apostolic writer shows his appreciation of a funda- 
mental characteristic of Christianity in contrast with the 
surrounding world in the declaration ‘this is the victory 
that overcomes the world, our faith.’ As Christian love 
was the new moral force that entered the world with 
Christ, Christian faith was the new religious force. Faith 
has always been the root principle of Christianity. Chris- 
tians are those who ‘have faith in God through Jesus 
Christ,’ ‘those who practise faith,’ ‘those of faith.” With 
Christianity the word “ faith’? may be said to have be- 
come “‘a permanent addition to the moral vocabulary of the 
world.” ! The word siotis, like ayamrn, by being baptized 
into Christianity, took on a more comprehensive content, 
being linked with morality and with a passionate love to a 
Person. The thing that Christians called faith embraced 
the noetic quality of conviction, or belief, the moral quality 
of steadfastness, or loyalty, and the religious quality of 
absolute trust in a Person. It did not fall a prey to the 
assumed dualism between the emotional and the intellectual 
elements in man’s life. 

Faith was no new thing, having existed in higher and lower 
forms throughout the history of religion. Men had pre- 
viously had faith in the deity, in providence, in the power of 
truth, in the reality of the unseen, and in the victory of good 
over evil. The polytheistic religions of Greece and Rome 
had nothing in them to evoke a personal attitude of the soul, 
though they maintained a conviction in the existence of 


1 Seeley, zbid. ch. VL 


288 THE VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 


national deities, and in their ability to send bane or blessing, 
and in the efficacy of ritual. The primary purpose of 
worship was not the good of a man’s own soul so much as for 
the sake of the body politic. The citizen’s conduct was 
determined by custom and tradition, rather than by per- 
sonal choice grounded on conviction. To men of religious 
aptitudes, of course, the reality of the unseen would be a 
factor in their lives, and the consciousness of the help of the 
deity would sustain them in trouble. There was much 
diversity of opinion in paganism as to the efficacy and nature 
of prayer. Lucian finds abundant material for sarcasm in 
the unspiritual prayers that ascend to God. But there were 
men of prayer like Socrates! who laid stress on the sub- 
jective attitude of the worshipper, and Maximus of Tyre 
to whom prayer is ‘ talking to God,’ * and the author of the 
Epinomis, who says ‘ pray to the gods with faith.’ We 
cannot deny to the loftier pagan souls an element of that 
passionate abandonment which rose above orgiastic mutila- 
tions to the contemplation of Love, the amor Dez intellectualis. 
True ‘Gnosis was a passion with the spiritual Plotinus, and 
Porphyry speaks with awe of his own sublimation. There 
is a ring of genuine religious experience in Plutarch’s testi- 
mony that ‘the highest of our initiations in this world 
is only the dream of that true vision and initiation, and the 
discourses [of the Mysteries] have been so carefully framed as 
to awaken the memory of the sublime things above.’ These, 
however, were the exceptions ; faith was nota basic principle 
in the life of paganism; ‘“‘ faith,’ according to Hatch, ‘‘as a 
principle of religion, was quite unknown in the state 
worships. Aman joined in the rites because he was born 
or lived in a certain place. He acted as a member of a 
social or political group, not as an individual, and personal 
conviction or trust in the gods played no part in deter- 
mining his action.”’* 

The conception of faith is strangely absent from Stoicism. 
Though this religious system rendered splendid service by 


1 Schmidt, p. 6 ff. 2 Os 
3 The Pauline Idea of Faith, p. 68. 


FAITH IN THE MYSTERIES 289 


emphasizing the unity of the deity, the supremacy of 
conscience, the duty of ordering life in harmony with the 
will of God, and by offering the soul arefuge in the Over-soul, 
or pervading Reason of the universe, it was either uncon- 
scious of the lack of a personal bond with its God or unable 
to supply it. ‘‘ The Stoic logic had failed to indicate 
clearly how from the knowledge of the universe as it is men 
could find a basis for their hopes and efforts for its future ; 
the missing criterion is supplied by the Paulist doctrine of 
faith.” + The word fides is found in the Stoic vocabulary, 
but not the thing we know as faith.? 

The Mystery-Religions, appealing to the choice of the 
individual, were more likely to require and evoke faith.* 
Here again we are disappointed to discover what a scanty 
réle faith plays, and how far it is from being a principle 
of the personal religious life. Faith as confidence or 
assurance,‘ or as belief in dogma, or ritual, or sacrament, 
is necessarily present, but that distinctively religious charac- 
ter of faith as personal trust in a God conceived as a person 
is inconspicuous. The psychological and noetic qualities 
are present, but faith as the link between the soul and God 
is missing. The phenomenal success of the Mysteries and 
their stubborn opposition to Christianity were due to their 
ability to inspire faith of a kind, that is, belief in their 
superiority, in the efficacy of their sacraments, and in their 
power to deliver the individual from the evils of astrology, 
from earthly limitations, and death. Their gods were be- 
lieved in as Saviours, and worshipped with assurance as 
providing atonement here and securing a happy lot beyond. 
The sacramental virtues were such that they produced an 


1 Arnold, p. 415. 

2 Cf. Hatch, op. cit. : “‘ Of faith as a principle of religion it made nothing. 
Faith was not an important factor in the religious life of the Stoics, and 
hence it played no conspicuous part in their religious teaching "’ (pp. 75-6). 

3 “ A doctrine of justification by faith rather than by works is at the root 
of all the ancient mystery-religions”’ (E. Strong and N. Jolliffe, J.H.S 
XLIV, p. 107). 

4 ‘ At length, full of confidence (plena fiducia), I began to take part in the 
divine service of the true religion’ (Apul. Met. XI. 26.) 


20 


290 THE VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 


ex opere operato effect but little dependent on the subjective 
estate or faith of the worshipper, though the contrast in the 
well-known religious proverb between the thyrsus-bearers 
and the Bacchi warns us against judging paganism by its 
averages. Participation in the ¢aurobolium rendered the 
initiate ‘reborn for eternity.’ Initiation into the Orphic- 
Pythagorean lore secured for the soul identification with the 
deity. The mystic state, whether of ecstasy or of enthusiasm, 
superseded faith. It rested on immediate experience, the 
fruition of faith. The religion of Hermes Trismegistos 
speaks several times of faith, which, however, occupies a 
diminutive place compared with Gnosis. The Hermetic 
mystic can say ‘wherefore I believe and bear witness ; 
I am departing to life and light.’!_ Of him it is said ‘to know 
is to believe [have faith]; to disbelieve is to fail to know 
fall aorists] . . . arid, having reflected on all things and 
having discovered that they are consonant with the 
revelations of the Logos, he believed and found rest in the 
lovely faith.’* This Hermetic faith was too vague, and 
pitched too high for the average man. 

It is only fair to the Hermetic religion and to classic 
Gnosticism to point out that their Gnosis was not that 
intellectual and metaphysical speculation by which they are 
so often misrepresented, and especially by the bald trans- 
lation ‘“‘ knowledge.’’ For the true Hermetic believer 
Gnosis had to do with spirit (nous) rather than with mind. 
And Gnosticism itself was born of the new religious aspira- 
tion* which commenced with the Roman Empire. Its 
first teachers were seekers after truth rather than 
mystagogues. But after its classic prime in the second 
century it lost touch in the third century with Thought 
and Reason and gave way to fantasy or degenerated into 
occultism. But, like the only true modern Gnostic, Blake, 
the real Gnostics believed that, whereas faith is the evidence 
of things unseen, they should not be unseen, but known 


1 Poimandres, 32 (Reitzenstein’s ed, p. 338). 
* Corpus Herm. IX. to. 
®’ Cf. De Faye, Gnostiques, p. 434 f. 


FAITH AND CULT-LOYALTY 291 


and seen. The expression ‘we shall know as we are 
known ’ gives something the longing for which supersedes 
faith and which the Gnostics claimed to have, and which 
the writer of the Fourth Gospel, partly in sympathy with, 
and partly in opposition to, Gnosticism, claimed to find in the 
present experience of the knowledge of God in Jesus Christ. 

There was also present in the Mysteries another function 
of faith which became conspicuous in Christianity—cult- 
loyalty, faith in, or fidelity to, the deity which formed the 
bond of cohesion of the religious guilds and made the mem- 
bers collegae et consacranet. The religion of Mithra was a 
militia, or warfare, which for the Roman mind implied a 
sacramentum, or oath ofallegiance. Faith was struggling for 
expression when Mithra was addressed as Sol Invictus, or 
Isis as ‘ thou eternal Saviour of the race of men,’ or when the 
initiate uttered ‘I have escaped evil; I have found good’ ; 
“Thou art I, andIam Thou.’! The Mystery-Religions thus 
inculcated faith in their patron deities, in the magical 
efficacy of rites, in mystic identification with the god, and 
cult-loyalty. But such faith was not the mainspring of 
the religious life and conduct of the average mystae, but 
rather, as it were, a by-product: it was not necessarily 
of an ethical character, whereas the Christian conception 
was through and through ethical in its inseparable associa- 
tion with works. Neither could faith in its religious aspect 
as trust in a person thrive when directed to divinities that 
were the product of a maturer reflection upon a primitive 
nature-worship. 

As in many other respects, it was the Jew who was the 
true predecessor of the Christian in demonstrating the power 
and practice of faith, both in its moral and religious char- 
acter. Hebrew religion was differentiated from all other 
religions of antiquity by this personal trust in the living 
God, and by a faith which expressed itself in an ardent 
desire for fellowship with Him. This faith took its rise from 
Jewish monotheism and the ethical conception of the 
holiness of God which demanded holiness in His worshippers. 

1 Dieterich, Abraxas, p. 196. 


292 THE VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 


Their personal reliance upon God was the root of all their 
piety and the secret of their indestructibility. Neither 
polytheism nor henotheism nor an abstract monotheism could 
call forth such a faith. Writers of Hebrew history recognized 
the uniqueness of Israelitish faith. ‘ Our fathers trusted in 
Thee ; they trusted and were not ashamed’: ‘ Look at the 
generations of old and see; who ever put his trust in the 
Lord and was ashamed ?’? The faith of Abraham was a 
commonplace in the theology of the synagogue. The 
Jewish-Christian author of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
encourages believers by calling the roll of Jewish worthies 
who ‘ endured as seeing Him who is invisible.’ 

Two Jews of the Diaspora, Philo and Paul, men of the 
profoundest religious convictions, took up the Jewish 
conception of faith and gave to it a premier place in the 
religious life which it can never lose. Of Philo Bousset has 
truthfully remarked,’ “‘ For the first time in the history of 
religion we find the thought of Faith in the centre of religion : 
Philo is the first great psychologist of Faith.’”’ Faith 
occupies a conspicuous place in Philo’s mysticism: it is ‘a 
perfect good,’ ‘a true and abiding good,’ ‘an amelioration 
of the soul at all points,’ ‘the most stable of the virtues,’ 
‘the most perfect of the virtues,’ the ‘ prize ’ of the virtuous 
man. As Philo’s system is a syncretism of Platonic Idealism, 
Stoic Mysticism, and Hebrew Revelation, these three ele- 
ments are held by some to be discernible in his doctrine 
of faith. The basis is his Jewish faith as personal trust in 
the living God, upon which is superadded a sublime idealism 
which looks to God as the homeland of the soul. The 
provenance of the mystic strain in his faith is disputed. 
Bréhier,? Hatch,‘ and others attribute it to Stoicism, for 
which certain passages may be cited, but these furnish 
parallelisms of language rather than of thought; and 


1 Eeclus. II. 10. 

2 Religion des Judentums, 2nd ed. p. 514. Cf. also his Kyrios Christos, 
p. 174, and H. A. A. Kennedy, Philo’s Contribution to Religion, p. 121 f. 

8 Les Idées Phil. et Relig. de Philon ad’ Alexandrie, p. 222. 

* Pauline Idea of Faith, pp. 47, 80. 


FAITH IN PHILO’S MYSTICISM 293 


further, the a priori probability that this important ingre- 
dient in Philo’s philosophy-religion could not fail to act 
upon his conception of faith. There is the danger of 
deriving this mystic strain from one source, when, as Hatch 
admits, ‘“‘the religious atmosphere of the Graeco-Roman 
world was laden with mysticism.’’ Kennedy more correctly 
holds that it is “‘far more probable that he speaks funda- 
mentally on the ground of his own religious experience.” ! 
Sometimes Philo seems to stress the noetic, or Greek 
character of faith, as when he speaks of it as ‘ the work of 
an Olympian understanding’; but this is not a dominant 
note. He rather inclines to emphazise the other side, thereby 
placing faith as the congener or ally of, or preparation for, 
the ecstatic state which gives immediate knowledge of God. 
This mystic strain, or juxtaposition of faith and mystic 
conditions, was of considerable importance in the history 
of religion. Herein, as in many other aspects, Philo proved 
the mediator between East and West. He demonstrated 
how a vital ethical faith in God could unite with and fur- 
nish the means of satisfying the universal mystic strivings 
of the age for union with God. 

Though Philo’s doctrine was of such a comprehensive 
nature as was unknown to religious experience previously, a 
younger contemporary was independently working out a 
kindred empiric doctrine. Philo did much for the Judaism 
of the Diaspora and for Christianity. Such a vision of the 
spiritual world could never be completely lost to mankind. 
He embodied the spirit of the age for his countryman—“ a 
growing consciousness among the Jews of the time of the 
worth and efficacy of faith as a means of salvation alongside 
of the righteousness attainable by works.’’* In this way 
Philo provided a corrective to the hardness of legalism and to 
the degeneracy of trust in God to trust in the Law, corre- 
sponding to the later degeneration of Christian faith from a 


1 Ibid. p. 125 

2 Thackeray,’ Relation of St. Paul to Contemporary Jewish Thought, 
p- 90; cf. Bousset, p. 223 ff.; Excursus by Lietzmann, Handbuch z. N.T. 
TLD er p24 


294 THE VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 


religious trust into a credal assent and acceptance of meta- 
physical formulae.t On the other hand, for the many 
thousands reached by the teachings of the synagogue of the 
Diaspora Philo made the moral quality indissociable from 
the religious by declaring that faith conduced to virtue or 
was the crown of virtue, as Christianity joined faith and 
works. 

It was only in Christianity that faith as a religious principle 
of life came to its full fruition. Christian faith embraced 
every worthy element of prior religious experience and 
aspiration ; while it exalted man above his earthliness, it did 
justice to all the interests and relations of earth life. In 
its comprehensiveness it was unsurpassed, while in one 
important aspect it proved unique—faith in an historic 
Person, and in the defiant enthusiasm awakened by loyalty 
to that Person. The Person of Christ was the centre of the 
new faith. Jews and Christians believed in God, but 
Christians ‘ believed in God through Jesus Christ.’ 

Faith in Jesus thus became a fundamental doctrine of 
Christianity. Paul, a younger contemporary of Philo, took 
up the apostolic message, and, influenced by his personal 
experience on the road to Damascus and his familiarity with 
the Old Testament,? gave to faith a central position in 
Christianity which it never can lose,’ a faith awakened and 
sustained by the Cross of Christ. The Pauline conception 
of faith has proved even more epoch-making than that of 
Philo in that it more effectively combined the Hebraic and 
the Hellenistic elements in a unity which has been a new 
dynamic in the religious life of mankind. The emotional, 
the noetic, the ethical, and the religious elements are 
commingled. Unlike that of Philo, faith is for Paul rather 
the initiation of the Christian life than the prize won at 
the end, though of course the Christian life is a growth in 
faith as in every other grace, so that “‘ perhaps faith 
must always be viewed under these two aspects, as the clue 


1 Cf. Hatch, Influence of Greek Ideas, p. 313 ff. 
2 Thackeray, p. 90 f. 
3 Cf. Morgan, Religion and Theology of Paul, p. 114 ff. 


THE FAITH-MYSTICISM OF PAUL 205 


to spiritual progress as well as its crown.’’! Unlike Philo, 
faith, in Paul’s view, is not something inferior to the ecstatic 
or mystic condition which gives a superior Knowledge, but 
the mystic state depends wholly on faith as its source. 
Perhaps it might be more truly said that in Paul these 
two functions of the psychic life are one: his mysticism 1s 
*‘faith-mysticism,’ or ‘ Christ-mysticism.’ To be ‘in faith,’ 
‘in Christ,’ ‘in the Spirit’ are synonymous. Paul himself, 
as a ‘pneumatic,’ enjoyed revelations, visions, ecstasis, 
pneumatic charismata, but while he prized these as spiritual 
phenomena he held them secondary to the more normal 
experiences of Christian living. To be ‘in Christ ’ or to have 
‘Christ in you,’ it was unnecessary for a man to be trans- 
ported into that ecstatic condition described by Philo, in 
which personality is for the time being in abeyance, or by 
Paul himself in the experience of being caught up into the 
third heaven. Whence came this faith-mysticism? of Paul 
which laid hold of the Graeco-Roman world and attracted 
initiates from the gods of the Mystery-Religions to Christ ? 
Hatch answers : 


““ Paul’s mysticism seems to have been derived from no one 
source in particular, as from Philo or some one of the 
Mystery-cults. It was rather absorbed, in a perfectly 
natural and partly unconscious way, from his Graeco-Roman 
environment, in which mysticism was a very prominent and 
important factor.” * 


This answer recognizes the fact that Paul’s converts were 
steeped in mystic ideas and that they could without difficulty 
put themselves en rapport with Paul’s teaching ; also, that 
Paul himself, as a son of the Diaspora, must have been 
familiar with the main religious ideas of the Mystery-cults and 
touched by the mysticism that was “‘in the air”’; but it 

1H. A. A. Kennedy, Expositor, March ’19, p. 218. 

2 In Ovfismo e Paolinismo, published 1922, Prof Macchioro puts forth a 
novel view in claiming for Pauline Christology and mysticism Orphic 
origin. Cf. F. Anderson, Paulinism and Orphism in Australasian Jour 


of Phil. and Psychology, September ’24. 
3 OP. cit. p. 66. 


296 THE VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 


hardly does justice to the fact that one who had ‘seen the 
Lord’ did not need to absorb a mystery-atmosphere, and 
that Paul’s mysticism was first-hand and can be shown 
to date only from that moment when ‘it pleased God to 
reveal His Son in me,’ which the three narratives of his 
conversion in Acts bear out ; nor does it do justice to the 
distance between Paul’s ‘Christ-mysticism’ and that 
mysticism which clung round the Mysteries. Paul, as a 
Hebrew of Hebrews, was prior to his conversion too con- 
servative a Jew to welcome mystic ideas, for, though the 
Jewish race produced the three great mystics, Philo and Paul 
and the author of the Fourth Gospel, “the Jewish mind 
and character, in spite of its deeply religious bent, was alien 
to mysticism.’”’+ It would be difficult to detect the affinity 
between the Faith-mysticism of Paul and the surrounding 
Graeco-Roman mysticism: the differences far outweigh 
the faint resemblances.’ In Paul there is a type of mysti- 
cism which stands by itself * and which differs from the 
mysticism of the Mystery-Religions and from that of Philo 
in two important aspects: first, as regards the human 
factor, there is a conspicuous absence of any idea of absorp- 
tion in the deity. Paul valued too highly his own person- 
ality and individuality. The will is a factor as potent as 
emotion. Paul’s ‘life hid with Christ in God’ is a life of 
active fellowship with Christ, but never absorption into 
Christ. Secondly, as regards the Divine factor, in the 
mystic fellowship the faith-mysticism of Paul is faith 
grounded on an historic Personality to whose love faith is 
the necessary response. The Christian who is ‘in Christ ’ 
finds himself in fellowship witha Person, and is not lost, as 
in the mysticism of Philo or Neo-Platonism, in the ocean of 
the Absolute, nor, as in the Mysteries, does he undergo 
divinization. He becomes like Christ, but never Christ. 
Such was the character of that Christian faith which 


1 Inge, Christian Mysticism, p. 39. Cf. Pringle-Pattison, Ency. Brit. 
11th ed. art. Mysticism, p. 124 a; Gruppe, Gr. Myth. II, p. 1608 ff. 

? For difference between Pauline and Hellenistic mysticism cf. Bousset , 
Kyrios Christos, p. 172 f. 

> Cf. Kennedy, St. Paul and the Mystery-Religions, p. 291 


THE GREEK BIBLE 297 


overcame the world. It took on the features of Jesus’ 
own all-conquering trust in the Father; it was based on 
loyalty to His Person ; it furnished the means of fellowship 
with Him ; and it met the deepest needs of the age as the link 
between the human soul and God. It was a faith that kept 
company with knowledge, arising from a knowledge of what 
Christ was and issuing in a profounder knowledge—and yet 
the humblest sinner! could by the venture of faith find 
himself in touch with the living God. Herein, as a demo- 
cratic principle, it differed from the systems of Gnosticism, 
whether pagan, Jewish, or Christian, which because of their 
emphasis on an esoteric ‘knowledge’ were aristocratic 
systems to which universalism was denied. Pagan apologists, 
misunderstanding the true character of Christian faith and 
viewing it mainly as belief, ridiculed it as inferior to 
knowledge and akin to ignorance. The path to victory of 
Christian faith was prepared by the Jewish personal trust in 
God, to which it had most affinity, and by those mystic 
aspirations fostered by the Mystery-cults. The idea of faith 
was “in the air and waiting only for an object worthy of 
it.”’* Christ proved to faith the power of God unto salvation 
to a world crying out for Saviour-gods. 


IV. THE GREEK BIBLE 


Christianity owed a large debt to Judaism, which put in 
her hands a holy book sanctioned by its antiquity. From 
Judaism Christianity learned the use of this book in 
propaganda and finally derived from the parent faith the 
idea of the formation of a Christian canonical book. 
Through the synagogue the Greek Bible became familiar 
to the Jews of the Diaspora, to the proselytes, and to 
multitudes of God-fearers. This world-book inculcated the 


1 Cf. Seeley, Ecce Homo, ch. VI: ‘‘ Other virtues can scarcely thrive 
without a fine natural organization and a happy training. But the most 
neglected and ungifted of men may make a beginning with faith. Other 
virtues want civilization, a certain amount of knowledge, a few books ; 
but in half-brutal countenances faith will light up a glimmer of nobleness.’’ 

* Sanday and Headlam, Romans, p. 33. 


298 THE VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 


habit and taught the language of prayer, witnessed to a 
vital monotheism, and required a lofty ethical standard. 
It was no small advantage to Christianity, both in its 
incipient and in its later stages, to have ready to hand such 
an authoritative spiritual weapon. 


“The possession of these sacred Scriptures, descended 
from an antiquity by the side of which the beginnings of 
Greek philosophy were modern, and derived from divine 
Revelation, made a doubly profound impression upon an age 
which turned its eyes to the ancients for wisdom and to 
heaven for a truth beyond the attainment of reason.” 1 


To understand the advantages accruing to early Chris- 
tianity from Biblicism we must understand the attitude of 
that age toward authority, which was altogether different 
from that of the present day. The tendency of the age was to 
seek authority and rest in it. It would be unsafe to trace 
this tendency to any one particular cause, but the main 
cause was the regnant subjectivity which, in recoil from a 
previous period of objectivity,’ laid stress on the inwardness 
of religion and exposed the perplexities of the question of 
selfhood. In this limitless region there were few or no 
guide-posts, so that in the bewilderment of inwardness 
there arose a new disposition to seek external authority and 
to believe what one cannot prove. In post-Aristotelian 
thought there set in a reaction against abstract speculation 
accompanied by a corresponding demand for concrete views 
to guide conduct. Socrates and the Sophists undermined 
the authority of tradition and custom. Platonism and 
Aristotelianism, deriving their inspiration from Socrates, had 
essayed the contemplation of the universe and man, trusting 
in ‘‘ man’s unconquerable mind,” and had vindicated the 
rights and privileges of the “ meddling intellect.”” But a 
new world-order was inaugurated by Alexander, on the 
threshold of which stood Aristotle. Mistrust in man’s 


1 G. F. Moore, History of Religion, Il. p. 521 f. 
2 Cf. K. Manitius’ note, p. 283 of his ed. of Proclus, Hypotyposis astronom. 
positionum, Leip. ’og. 


CHANGED ATTITUDE TO AUTHORITY 299 


capacity for knowledge and in the reliability of that know- 
ledge, never doubted in the heyday of Greek thought, began 
to find expression. In the later Greek schools there is much 
discussion as to the criterion of knowledge as well as its 
relation to conduct. The Cyrenaics despaired of knowledge. 
The Stoics, following Aristotle, were pure empirics. The 
Epicureans ! relied solely on the senses, but doubted whether 
these give certain knowledge. The Academicians rejected 
both sense-knowledge and concept-knowledge, and were 
content to rest in suspense of judgment, or, like Bishop 
Butler, to accept probability as the guide of life. The Eclec- 
tics fell back on the relativity of knowledge, trusting most 
in the self-consciousness, or in the consensus omnium. The 
various elements of personality had been coming ever more 
prominently into view since the days of Socrates and 
Aristotle ; the intellectual had lost its hegemony, or its 
hegemony was questioned before the volitional and the 
emotional, as the moral consciousness asserted its rights 
beside ratiocination. Thought was moving on its way 
from the concept theories of Socrates to the quietism of 
Plotinus. Man cannot permanently rest in agnosticism ; 
if he cannot by himself attain assurance he will flee for refuge 
to authority. Criteria for knowledge and standards for 
conduct were sought in every quarter: in the moral 
consciousness, in the consensus gentium, in Nature, in the 
ideal wise man, in the early traditions of the Greek world or 
in the ancient cults of the Orient. Denis, speaking of the 
religious conditions of the Graeco-Roman world, says of 
the Greeks : 


“Grown old in dialectics, tired of uncertainty and 
scepticism, they were less conscious of the need of arriving 
by every means at the emancipation of the spirit, than of 
discovering a norm which should put an end to their 
discussions and to their doubts. In the letter of a formal 
and sacred text they would see an alleviation rather 
than a constraint and inconvenience. It is well known 
how many philosophers of the first century avoided dis- 


1 Cf. Bussell, School of Plate, p. 178. 


300 THE VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 


cussion in order to adopt sacramental formulae, and how, 
more anxious for self-discipline than for independence, 
they themselves had recourse to faith, bound themselves 
to observances and. exercises like believers and ascetics 
who possessed truth rather than like thinkers in search 
of it.” 


In the new clamant needs of the spirit men sought 
direction from every source which promised help. Some 
laid their burdens before the spiritual directors and 
private chaplains whose philosophy had become a very 
practical religion. Some sought incarnate examples, living 
or dead, that in imitation of them they might guide their 
steps aright. Thousands entered the synagogue to be 
instructed in the requirements of the moral law and in the 
ideals of prophetism. Multitudes sought initiation in the 
Mystery-Religions whose priests and adherents welcomed 
every enquirer. 

Christianity, emerging within the fold of Judaism and 
cognizant of the rdle which the Old Testament, and especially 
the version of the Seventy, had played in Jewish propaganda, 
adopted the Jewish Scriptures and baptized them into 
Christ. In the hands of Christians the Septuagint became 
such a formidable weapon against Jews and heathen that 
Jewish scholars later denied to it inspiration in favour of 
‘the Hebrew verity.’ From this Old Testament * an antho- 
logy of Messianic proof-texts was made by Christian preachers 
to demonstrate that Christ was the fulfilment of Old Testa- 
ment Revelation. Scriptural proof occupied a prominent 
place in reasoning and in controversy. By an exegesis, 
sometimes literalistic, mostly allegorical, sometimes historic, 
Christians claimed for Jesus a central place in human history, 
while proving that the roots of their religion went back to 
an immemorial past—an especial virtue of a religion in that 


1 Histoive des Théories et des Idées Morales dans !’ Antiquité, II, p. 321. 

2 Cf. C. Martha, Les Moralistes sous empire romain, p. 16 ft.; Dill, 
Roman Society, bk. III. ch. I. 

3 Cf. Weizsacker, Apostolic Age, Eng. tr. I, p. 132f.; Lietzmann, 
Handbuch z. N.T. III. 1, p. 255. 


SEARCH FOR INFALLIBLE REVELATION — 301 


day. A book which the Saviour prized and into which 
He read Himself naturally assumed a position of authority. 
On the pattern of the Greek Bible the Christians began early 
in the second century the preparation of a specifically 
Christian collection, the delimitation of which was not 
completed until the end of the fourth century. 

The advantages of having to hand the Greek Bible will be 
more apparent if we reflect upon the demand of the age for 
a new supernatural source of knowledge by Revelation ! 
rather than by ratiocination. Still in search of a ‘ strong 
raft ’ or ‘some sure word’ of God, hesitating on the brink 
of knowledge before plunging into the gulf of mysticism, 
troubled by acute subjectivity and world-weariness, men 
manifested a readiness to believe which was accentuated 
by contact with the East, especially with Hebrew Revelation. 


“In a period,”’ says Zeller,? “‘ in which much greater weight 
was laid on the practical effect of philosophy than on scien- 
tific knowledge as such, in which a deep distrust of man’s 
capacity of knowledge prevailed, and there was a general 
inclination to accept truth, when found, on the basis of 
practical necessity, and a direct conviction of it, even at the 
cost of scientific consistency—in such a period only a slight 
impulse was needed in order to lead the spirit in its search 
for truth beyond the limits of natural knowledge to a 
supposed higher fountain.” 


The knowledge now sought was of a different order from 
that of disinterested speculation. There was a change of 
emphasis with new associations and new methods and 
channels. To ‘know God’ became the universal question 
to which every living religion addressed itself, and the more 
pretensions a religion could make to satisfy this knowledge 
the more success would attend it. Without Gnosis salva- 
tion was universally conceived as impossible. Every species 


1 Cf. Neander, Church History, Eng. tr. I, p. 43; Zeller, Stoics, Epicu- 
reans, and Sceptics, Eng. tr. p. 30. 

2 Outlines, p. 350. Murray (Four Stages, p. 103) notes as marks of the 
Christian era, in Christian and pagan literature alike, “a despair of patient 
enquiry, a cry for infallible revelation.” 


302 THE VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 


of Gnosticism attempted to supply this needed revelation that 
the individual might enter into correct religious relations 
with the deity. In this sense every competing religion of the 
Graeco-Roman age was a species of Gnosticism ! professing 
to possess a priceless revelation to be disclosed to its adher- 
ents. Judaism proclaimed that in the knowledge of Jahweh 
was Life, and that this knowledge had been vouchsafed to 
Israel through Moses and the prophets and preserved in their 
Scriptures. The Mystery-Religions, by a sacramental drama 
of the life of the deity, put the initiates into possession 
of such a knowledge of formulae, rites, and sacraments as 
secured salvation. The Hermetic religion professes to be 
essentially an esoteric religion, a claim which it makes good 
in a measure far beyond all other forms of the Mysteries. 
The Revelation therein is of two kinds?: first, that given 
immediately by a god, Hermes, That, or Aesculapius, or the 
Good Demon,’ and secondly that given mediately by a gifted 
prophet who derives his inspiration either from the god 
within or by ascending by divine assistance to the home 
of the gods. There can be no salvation, according to this 
Hermetic religion, apart from true Guosis which comes 
partly by instruction and partly by intuition. The salvation 
to which this knowledge conduces is of two prominent types, 
that of Regeneration and that of Deification. 

All the religions whose vitality rendered them competitors 
against Christianity belonged to the class of “religions of 
authority,” which professed to be in possession of a super- 
natural revelation as a means of salvation. Christianity 
entered the lists also as a religion of authority, as was 
necessary in that age. It claimed to be in possession from 
the beginning of a special revelation in a book well known 
to all who were in contact with Judaism, and this written 


1 “Gots Oecd) wird das Losungswort im Konkurrenzkampfe der 
Religionen ”’ (Norden, Agnostos Theos, p. 109; Mead, Quests, p. 177 ff.). 

2 Reitzenstein, Hell. Mysterien-Religionen, p. 179 ff.; Kennedy, Sz. 
Paul, p. 106. 

3 On theories of the Agathodaimon as a mystical angel, the good demon 
of Egypt, Heaven, an Egyptian philosopher, v. Berthelot, Alchimistes, 
pt. 2, Greek text, p. 80 (from Olympiodorus). 


RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT 303 


revelation it later supplemented by a specifically Christian 
canon. But it had an incalculable advantage over Judaism 
and all other religions in that its authority was augmented 
by the personality of its Founder, who had so revealed 
the Father that Christians offered to the world ‘ the know- 
ledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ.’ The Scribe 
pretended to hold ‘the key of knowledge,’ to ‘ bind 
and loose,’ to ‘open and shut’; but Christians, as a royal 
priesthood, before the days of cold ecclesiasticism, opened 
to all men the Kingdom of Heaven by faith. 

It does not pertain to our present purposes to dwell upon 
the abuses of this handy Biblicism, or to show how, what 
proved to be an initial advantage, became, through a mis- 
taken reverence, a fetter upon Christianity. As Judaism 
was pre-eminently “the religion of a book,’’ Christianity 
too began to be regarded as such rather than as the religion 
of Life and of the Spirit.1 On the theory inevitable to 
that age, Revelation was viewed as something static, a 
quantum given once for all and of unalterably defined 
content, whereas a living religion must be dynamic and 
evolutional, capable of adaptation to every form of life and 
to every age and of expansion by its own inner laws. The 
letter which, by its authority, helped Christianity at the 
beginning, finally became baneful through abuse. The free- 
dom of the divine Spirit was hampered even by a misuse 
of a venerable collection of books of sublime worth. For 
long centuries Biblicism proved to Christianity almost as 
grievous a load as legalism had been to Judaism. Even 
the Reformation only lightened the burden. As a result 
of the application of the historic method to biblical study, 
and more especially from a due recognition, since the days 
of Schleiermacher, of the continuity and validity of 
Christian experience, we are in the happier position of 
being able to prize the classic holy books of Hebrew religion 
and early Christianity as books of permanent worth, though 
containing contemporary elements alongside of the perennial. 
At the same time we can better appreciate Christianity as 


1 Cf. Watson, Philosophic Basis of Religion, p. 3 ff. 


304 THE VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY _ 


the religion of Jesus which has in it principles of growth, 
adaptation, and expansion present in every living organism. 
Sabatier is correct, in the main, in viewing Christianity as 
pre-eminently the religion of the Spirit and of Life rather 
than as a religion of authority. As the religion of the Spirit 
and of Life it is authoritative. Vast tracts of religious and 
specifically Christian experience have been traversed since 
the Old Testament and New Testament were penned ; new 
reaches of religious aspiration have been attained, while 
“leagues beyond those leagues there is more sea.” The 
leaven implanted by Jesus into the mass of humanity has 
been working silently but persistently since His day. That 
Spirit which He promised His followers. has through the 
centuries been leading men into truth and more truth. 
Christianity is the religion of liberty: ‘if the Son make you 
free, you shall be free indeed.’ 


V. CHRISTIANITY BROUGHT A SATISFYING MESSAGE TO THE 
WIDESPREAD SORROW OF THE ANCIENT WORLD 


The real test of any religion is not its attitude to the 
joys and raptures of life, but its ability to give moral con- 
tent to the sorrows and perplexities of life. Christianity 
stood this test.1. No other religion, except pre-Christian 
Buddhism, ever approached Christianity in dealing with the 
perennial problem of human suffering, but both the approach 
and the solution were different. Buddhism offered an 
anodyne or a way of escape, while Christianity gave to 
suffering a profound religious meaning, and, instead of 
demanding resignation, offered a means of conquest over 
a world which God loves, and transmuted grief into joy. 
Stoicism deserved well of that ancient world because of 
its eminent services in extracting a meaning from pain,? 

1 “It seems sometimes as if the Greek thinkers . . . shrank in the last 
resort from grasping the nettle of suffering firmly. Nor is there any 
religion or philosophy, except Christianity, which has really drawn ths 
song. of the world’s evil’’ (Inge, Plotinus, II. 208). 

“Stoicism throve because, like Christianity, it is a philosophy of suf- 


fering ; it fell because, unlike Christianity, it is a philosophy of despair ”’ 
(Bigg, Christian Platonists, p. 288). 


CHRISTIAN MESSAGE TO SUFFERING 305 


but its richest fruit was a passionless resignation rather than 
an exultant ‘joy fulfilled.” The Mysteries, in their blind 
instinctive way, did point in their symbolism toward the 
religious solution in a ‘ fellowship of sufferings.’ 

Christianity most effectively brought a sustaining gospel 
to the sufferers of the Graeco-Roman world. It was 
uniquely fitted to do so because it was from its birth a 
religion whose ‘Lord of Glory’ had been ‘the Man/ of 
Sorrows’ in an earthly life of conflict culminating in an 
agonizing death. Jesus, the Son of God, was proclaimed as 
the passibilis Christus who, in the faith of His followers, was 
the historic fulfilment of the Suffering Servant of Deutero- 
Isaiah’s vision, in which the mysterious redemptive aspects 
of suffering are so sublimely portrayed. In loyalty to 
Jesus’ example the demands for self-sacrifice and detachment 
from the world were pitched higher than in contemporary 
religions. There was no ambiguity about the conditions 
of entry into the Christian Society ; no easy terms were 
offered. ‘Ifa man wishes to come after Me, let him deny 
himself, and let him take up his cross [Luke adds ‘ daily ’] 
and follow Me. Whoever wishes to save his life shall destroy 
it, but whosoever shall lose his life for My sake and the gos- 
pel’s, shall save it.’ ‘ If the world hates you, you know that 
it hated Me.’ ‘If any man will live godly in Christ Jesus, 
he must suffer persecution.’ Such preaching of ‘ resisting 
unto blood’ was not calculated to attract the thoughtless. 
Christianity clearly envisaged the suffering and sin of the 
world. ‘‘ The general impression that we receive from the 
records of the New Testament is assuredly that they were 
written under a prevailing sense of human misery.”?! With 
the prevalent individualism of the Christian era and its 
consequent sensitiveness the problem of suffering had been 
accentuated. ‘ Life and pain are akin,’ Menander had said, 
and this is a recurrent refrain of the Greek Anthology. 
Virgil, ‘‘ majestic in thy sadness,’’ had sung of the Lacrymae 
verum. Seneca repeatedly gives utterance to such senti- 
ments as Omnis vita supplicium, and tota flebilis vita. All 

1 Merivale, Conversion of the Roman Empire, p. 88. 
ai 


306 THE VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 


religions were obliged to deal with the problem and offer 
salvation. Saviour-gods must be gods of ‘sympathy.’ 
Aesculapius was styled ‘ the greatest lover of men,’ as was 
also Serapis. Lucius addressed Isis as ‘ Thou bestowest 
a mother’s sweet love upon miserable mortals. . . . Thou 
dispellest the storms of life, and stretchest out thy right 
hand of salvation to struggling men.’ Plutarch?! lauds the 
same goddess that she has not become oblivious of her own 
trials and sufferings so that she can console humanity in 
its trials. The Great Mother of Pessinus was by her loss 
and grief brought near to suffering mothers. In nearly all 
the Mysteries there was enacted a symbolic passion-drama 
representing the trials and sufferings of the deity, in which 
joy succeeded grief and life was born of death. 

The two centuries preceding the Christian era had been a 
period of uninterrupted misery. For a time the Roman 
peace gave the world rest, but after the Antonine days 
happiness departed from the ancient world. It is significant 
that Christianity spread most rapidly in the half-century 
(closing third century) of the greatest confusion for pagan 
society.2 It is significant, too, that every persecution 
only strengthened the Church. When the emperors were 
anxiously guarding the frontiers, when the results of a 
vicious fiscal system had worked themselves out, when 
industry was paralysed, when earthquakes devastated rich 
and populous regions, when freemen were decreasing, 
when Goth and Hun and Vandal were swooping down on 
their prey in the empire, and when the Eternal City itself 
fell before the Germanic invaders, Christianity lengthened 
its cords and strengthened its stakes. Its competitors were 
overtaken by mortal weakness when ancient society was 
tottering to its fall—a weakness from which they never 
eventually recovered in spite of many deceptive revivals. 
Christianity outstripped all other religions in offering a 
comfortable message to a distracted world. Men were 
invited into the ‘fellowship of His sufferings’ that thus 


1 De Ts. et Osiy. ch. XXVII. 
2 Cf. Geficken, N. Jahrb. f. d. Kl. Alt. XLI. ’18, p. 99 ff. 


SYMBOLISM OF THE CROSS 307 


His ‘ joy might be fulfilled’ inthem. The bitter cries and 
tears of the agonizing Sufferer in Gethsemane reverberated 
through the Christian message, making Jesus very real and 
near to men in their agonies. The eschatological hope made 
the sufferings of the present time unworthy of comparison 
with the glory to be revealed. In mutual spiritual fellow- 
ship Christians supported one another, bearing one another’s 
burdens. For them the Communion of the Saints was a very 
real thing, as we learn, for example, from Paul’s thanksgiving 
to ‘ the Father of all mercies and God of every comfort, who 
comforts us in our every affliction that we may be enabled 
to comfort those in évery affliction through the comfort 
with which we ourselves are being comforted of God. 
Because in proportion as the sufferings of Christ abound 
toward us our comfort shall abound through Christ.’ 

The Christian message of the Cross was that of a suffering 
God in a real incarnation which made effective in life’s agonies 
the full depth of the co-suffering (sympathia) of God with His 
creatures.1 This was then, as it is to-day, the only evangel 
for the world’s pain, of which the Cross remains the perennial 
symbol : 


** Blazoned as on Heaven’s immortal noon, 
The Cross leads generations on.” 3 


The adn of Dionysos were legendary; the wa6n of 
Jesus were very real to Himself and His followers. Jesus was 
preached to the ancient world as the Physician greater than 
great Aesculapius, and more philanthropic than Serapis 
diravOpwroratos. The reputation which He acquired in 
Palestine as an efficient physician was immensely enhanced 
after His death, as seen in the spurious third-century corre- 
spondence between Abgar of Edessa and Jesus. One of the 
most popular and frequent titles of Jesus was Physician, and 
the Gospel was represented as a therapeutic of body, mind, 

1 Contrast the statement in a textbook of Hellenistic theology (Sallus- 
tius, De Diis et Mundo, 14) : ‘ God does not rejoice ; for that which rejoices 
also grieves.’ 


2 Cf. Pringle-Pattison, The Idea of God, p. 407 ff. 
® Chorus of the Hellas. 


308 THE VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 


and soul.t In the early Christian propaganda were united 
the functions of the medical profession and the ministry of 
preaching. Ignatius writes: ‘ There is only one Physician, 
Jesus Christ.’* Clement hails the Logos as ‘the only 
Paeonian physician of human infirmities, and the holy 
charmer of the sick soul, the all-sufficient physician of 
humanity.’* Tertullian writes Christum medicatorem ‘* and 
Augustine ® medicus magnus and omnipotens medicus, ‘The 
dispute between Celsus and Origen,*® with equal conviction, 
as to the relative merits of Aesculapius Saviour or Jesus 
Saviour, and the less pleasing pleading of Arnobius on the 
same theme,’ are instructive as evidence of the demand 
for healing* through religion. Eusebius describes Jesus 
in a literal quotation * from a Greek medical writer, pseudo- 
Hippocrates, as ‘ like an excellent physician who examines 
what is repulsive, handles ulcers, and reaps pain for Himself 
from the sufferings of others.’ An inscription discovered at 
Timgad in 1919 records the prayer of an age that suffered 
more deeply than has our own: Sub [venti] Christe tu solus 
medicus.1° The keen sensitiveness to pain and the widespread 
misery in which the Graeco-Roman period ended caused 
such a demand for personal consolation and healing through 
religion that the god of healing and ‘lover of men’ was 
one of the last to submit to Christianity, but not without 
his cult contributing a salvationist terminology and healing 
usages to the Christian Church. Many of the votive in- 
scliptions to Aesculapius could be pressed into Christian 
service by the simple substitution of the name of Christ for 


1 Cf. Harnack, Medicinisches aus d. dltesten Kivchengesch. in T. u. Unters. 
VIII, 1892; pp. 101-24 in Mission and Exp. I. 
Ad Eph. 7. 
Parasite 2.0; 
Ad Mare. III. 17. 
SES NG. NL Son Lie 
C. Celsum, III. 3, 23, 24. 
% Adv. Gentes, I. 38, 41, 49; VI. 21. 
®§ On Pythagoras’ reputation as a healer v. Aclian, V.H. IV. 17; cf. 
Roscher, II. 521 ff. 
od 5 el pie NS i 
10 Acad. des Inscr.: Comptes Rendus, 1920, pp. 75-83. 


an ~» BS b&b 


THE ORIGINALITY OF CHRISTIANITY 309 


that of His healing rival.. Perhaps, too, it was the figure 
of Aesculapius that suggested the model? for the gracious 
fourth or fifth century figure of Christ. 


VI. AN Historic AND PERSONAL CENTRE 


Christianity had a unique advantage over all its com- 
petitors, including even Judaism, in having an historic Person 
as Founder, whose Person was greater than His teachings. 
Herein lay its greatest originality and the main secret of its 
power. Christian enthusiasm was awakened and sustained 
not by an ideal, but by a Person. Christianity was the new 
spiritual power which entered our humanity-from the Per- 
sonality of one who had been a familiar figure in Palestine. 
Christian preachers did not require faith merely in Jesus’ 
teachings or in His Resurrection, but in Himself. By a true 
religious instinct His followers recognized that the Person- 
ality of their Master, which fascinated and perplexed them, 
which prompted Christologies, which gained their allegiance, 
was the new factor in history. Other religions might show a 
more imposing ceremonial, might offer a liturgy more subtle 
than the Disciples’ Prayer or the Apostles’ Creed; other 
religions and philosophies might with considerable success dis- 
pute the originality of Jesus’ teachings and furnish parallels 
to most of them, but no other religion could ‘ placard’ a 
real Being in flesh and blood who had lived so near to God 
and brought men into such intimate soul-satisfying union 
with the Father. 


“ The centre in the new religion is not an idea, nor a ritual 
act, but a Personality. Asits opponents were quick to point 
out... there was little new in Christian teaching. ... 
What was new in the new religion, in this ‘ third race’ of 
men? The Christians had their answer ready. In clear 


1 Cf, Harnack, Miss. and Exp.1, p.118f. In Rev. des Etudes grecques, 
XXIX, p. 78, is a photo of the ‘ Healer’ with a kneeling woman touching 
his garment with her right hand. 


310 THE VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 


speech, and in aphasia, they indicated their Founder. He 
was new.”’ 3 


The Christian apologists were conscious of the strength of 
their position in having an historic centre. Thus, in the 
middle of the second century an Assyrian fider defensor * 
wrote : 


‘ We do not utter idle tales in declaring that God was born 
in form of a man, I challenge you, our detractors, to con- 
trast your legends with our narratives. . . . Your legends 
are but idle tales. . . . O Greeks, believe me now, and do 
not attempt to resolve your myths or gods into allegory.’ 


A religion with a personal and historic founder, such as 
Judaism boasted in Moses or Ezra, Buddhism in Gotama, 
the Persian religion in Zoroaster, and Islam in the prophet 
of Arabia, has inevitably an advantage in propaganda over 
purely naturalistic and mythical faiths. Ideas must be 
incorporated in a person before they can effectively move 
mankind. Christianity could boast of a founder of unique 
holiness and power. Its sturdy competitors, the Mystery- 
Religions, could offer only myths which called for constant 
purification and allegorization to meet the moral needs of 
the day. The ethics of Jesus defied challenge; His 
character required no burnishing. He was and remained 
Leader and Captain to His followers : no modernization nor 
allegorization was necessary to remove offence to the moral 
consciousness. On the other hand, there never was a 
Mithra, and he never slew the mystic-sacramental bull. 
There never was a Great Mother of sorrows to wail over 
Attis and to become a true mother to the sorrowing daughters 
of humanity. Isis, in all her splendour, was but the product, 
however idealized by the religious instinct, of Egyptian 
Zoolatry. ‘Come, thou Saviour’ * was addressed to Dionysos, 
a creation of Chthonism. Apollo, the special god of the 


1 Glover, Conflict, p. 116. 2 Tatian, Ad Graecos, 21. 
3 Bul. Cor. Hell. XIX, p. 400. 


AN HISTORIC CENTRE 311 


Pythagoreans, who declared, ‘ I dwell with less pleasure in 
the resplendent heavens than in the hearts of good men,’ 
was the lofty culmination of a cult which saw in the Sun 
the image of the Good. The Logos of the Stoics was a pure 
abstraction, the inspiration of which would touch only the 
enlightened, and of their ideal Wise Man Plutarch declared, 
‘ He is nowhere on earth, nor ever has been.’? The Logos 
of Philo was merely a Hypostasis, or, at best, never stepped 
beyond the limits of personification. But for Christians 
‘the Logos became flesh and tabernacled among us, and we 
beheld His glory,’ an advantage which Augustine declares 
he could not find in any of the competitors of Christianity. 
To appreciate the dynamic which the Person of Jesus 
supplied to His followers we must remember how on the one 
hand ideas and ideals not clothed in a personality are unable 
to raise the masses of men, and, on the other, we must take 
account of a remarkable moral trait of the Graeco-Roman 
age—the ‘‘ ever-increasing tendency to personify the ethical 
ideal.”” The sublime teachings of Plato, the Stoics, and 
Neo-Platonism could not effectively lay hold on the masses 
so as to become the guide and inspiration of their lives. 
Educated men found a refuge there, and many of “the 
martyr-souls of heathendom ’”’ faced the last hours with a 
serene courage because of the spiritual truth and comfort 
derived from the philosophies which had supplanted the 
moribund national faiths. Some philosophers and their 
disciples made attempts to reach the masses. The Stoics, 
and especially their kindred Cynic preachers and lecturers 
and directors of conscience, went out into the highways and 
marts of life to cure souls, much as the Salvation Army does 
in our day. But the driving power of personality was lacking. 
**Precepts,”’ says Luther, ‘‘ show us what we ought to do, but 
do not impart to us the powertodoit.”” Ideals were held up 
before men, but these ideals had never been seen incarnated 
upon earth. An ideal never incarnated was too cold and 
powerless. Accordingly, the Hellenistic and Roman age 


1 Cf, Plato, Rep. VI. 508. 
* De Com. Not. 33. 


312 THE VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 


was emphatic in its demand for examples! to supplement 
precepts and support ideals. We may doubt if in any 
age morality and religion were more persistently taught by 
examples. Earnest men wished to behold beings of flesh 
and blood from whose example they might draw inspiration.? 
All history was searched for patterns by which men might 
live and die. In an eminently practical age virtues were 
illustrated from the dvamatis personae of history. The 
legendary Orpheus, Pythagoras, Socrates, Apollonius, 
Epicurus, and others were held before men’s gaze to accom- 
pany and reinforce precepts. But a perfect example— 
where was such to be found? Hence, the Stoic teachers, 
while drawing upon the records of the good and great of the 
past, preferred to portray their ideal Wise Man, at the same 
time frankly acknowledging that he had never lived. No 
one has given such definite expression to this yearning of the 
time for a personal ethical ideal as Seneca in his memorable 
despairing question: Ubi enim istum invenies quem tot 
saeculis quaerimus ? a question to which his creed could 
furnish no answer, but to which the answer was found in the 
Christian message. 

As another instance to indicate how universal was this 
personal ideal of perfection the quickened expectation of 
a Messianic leader among the Jews may be mentioned. 
Messianism, which was the earliest form of the prophetic 
confidence in a brighter future, was too vague: it must be 
achieved by a personal Messiah. The ideal of a Messianic 
era retreated more and more before that of a Messianic 
personage. Moreover, among pagans there was a nascent 
consciousness that the time was ripe for the epiphany of a 
God-man. This thought is familiar to us in the Latin court- 
poets.‘ The wish was father to the thought. The most 
conspicuous literary example of this focusing of religious 


1 Cf. Epict. Disc>II. 19; Seneca, Ep. XI. 8. 

2 Cf. Angus, Environment of Early Christianity, p. 82. 

3 Cicero, Acad. Pr. 145: ‘Sed qui sapiens sit aut fuerit ne ipsi quidem 
solent dicere’; and Plutarch, De Com. Not. 33. 

* Cf. Fowler, Roman Ideas of Deity, lect, IV. 


PERSONIFICATION OF THE ETHICAL IDEAL 313 


and religious-political hopes and longings in a person is 
found in Virgil’s so-called Messianic Eclogue, in which, per- 
haps in reply ! to the pessimism of Horace’s— 


‘Suis et ipsa Roma viribus ruit,’ 


and his fantastic solution— 


‘Arva beata 
Petamus arva, divites et insulas,’ 


there is held forth the hope of the speedy birth of a wonderful 
child who shall inaugurate a new era and bring back to earth 
the Golden Age. Nor is this personal ideal found here alone 
in Virgil. Conway,’ speaking of this Messianic ideal, says: 


“Tt can hardly, I think, be denied that in both the 
Georgics and the Aeneid we continually meet with a con- 
ception which in many ways is a parallel to the Jewish 
expectation of a Messiah; that is to say, the conception of 
a national hero or ruler, divinely inspired, and sent to 
deliver not his own nation only, but mankind, raising them 
to a new and ethically higher existence.” 


There was a universal craving in serious circles for a 
personal ethical ideal as a dynamic in the moral struggles 
of men and as a guarantee of the successful issue of those 
struggles and the perfectibility of human nature. This 
spirit of that age has been caught by Renan and well 
expressed in his words: ‘‘ Humanity seeks the ideal, but 
it seeks it in a person, and not in an abstraction. A man, 
the incarnation of the ideal, whose biography might serve 
as a frame for all the aspirations of the time, is what the 
religious mind sought.’”*? This need Christianity alone 

1 Cf. Ramsay, Expositor, June 1907, 

2 Virgil’s Messianic Eclogue, p. 31. 

3 Marc Auréle, p. 582, 5th ed.; cf. Dill, p. 621: “‘ The world needed 
more than a great physical force to assuage its cravings; it demanded a 
moral God, who could raise before the eyes of men a moral ideal, and 
support them in striving to attain it, one who could guide and comfort 
in the struggles of life, and in the darkness of its close, who could prepare 
the trembling soul for the great ordeal, in which the deeds done in the 
body are sifted on the verge of the eternal world.” 


314 THE VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 


proved able adequately to meet in the Person of Jesus, so 
truthfully described by James Martineau as “ the realized 
Ideal.’’ The seething hopes and dreams and premonitory 
glimpses of this ancient world, pagan and Jewish alike, 
were realized in the Gospel, “‘ not by borrowing ideas, or 
decking itself out in ancient symbols, but by the exhibition 
of a fact within the field of history in which were more than 
fulfilled the inextinguishable yearnings of the world’s 
desire.”’ 2 


1 Mackintosh, Person of Jesus Christ, p. 533- 


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Perdelwitz, R. Die Mysterienreligion u. d. Problem d. I Petrus- 
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Petrie, W. M. F. Personal Religion in Egypt before Christianity 
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Pettazoni, R. Le Origini det Kabiri nelle Isole de Mar Tracio 
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Pfister, F. Der Reliqguienkult 1m Altertum (Giessen, ’09-12). 

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Philos, D. Eleusis, ses M ystéres, ses ruines, et son musée (Athens, 
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Phythian-Adams, W. J. The Problem of the Mithraic Grades (in 
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Pierret, P. Les Interprétations dela Religion égyptienne (Conf. au 
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Pinches, T. G. The religious Ideas of the Babylonians (Lond. 
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Plew, C. F. Th. E. De Sarapide (Konigsberg, 68). 

Poland, Fr. Gesch. des griech. Vereinswesens (Leip. ’09). 

Prel, C. du. Die Mystik der alten Griechen (Leip. ’88). 

Preller, L. Demeter u. Persephone (Hamburg, ’37); Griech. 
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Mythologie (3rd ed. by H. Jordan, 1. ’8r). 

Preuschen, E. Mdnchtum u. Serapiskult (2nd ed. Giessen, ’03). 

Pringsheim, H.G. Archaeol. Bettrage zur Gesch. d. eleus. Kultus 
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Probst, F. Sakramente u. Sakramentalien in d. drei ersten christl. 
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Quandt, W. De Baccho ab Alexandri aetate in Asia Minore culto 
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Ramsay, W.M. Cuties and Bishoprics of Phrygia (2 parts, Oxf. 
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Reinach, S. Orpheus (Eng. tr. by F. Simmonds, Lond. and N.Y. 
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Reisner, G. A. The Egyptian Conception of Immortality (Lond. 
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Reitzenstein, R. Poitmandres (Leip. ’04); Die hellenist. Mysterien- 
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Das ivanische Evlésungsmysterien (Bonn, ’21). 

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328 BIBLIOGRAPHY 


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Rendtorff, F. M. Die Taufe im Urchristentum (Leip. ’05). 

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SELECTED LIST OF CHIEF RELEVANT ANCIENT 
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Abercius, Inscription of: Die Grabschrift des Abercius (ed. 
W. Liidtke and Th. Nissen, Leip. ’10; ed. A. Dieterich, 
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Achilles, Isagoge ad Avati Phaenomena (in Migne, Patrologia 
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in Texts and Studies, V. I, pp. 28-63. 

Aesculapius, Prayer to, C.J.A. II, 171. 

Almagest, v.s. Claudius Ptolemaeus. 

Ancient Fragments; Greek and Latin texts with tr. by I. P. 
Cory (2nd ed. Lond. 1832). 

Andania: Mystery-inscription of (Demeter and Kore, and (?) 
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pv2054.i; TGOXIL 5,2, no. 7399x 

Apollodorus Atheniensis, Bibliotheca, ed. I. Bekker, Leip. ’54; 
v. Mythologt Graect, ed. R. Wagner, Leip. ’94; also in 
Miiller, Frag. hist. gr. I.; Eng. tr. by J. Frazer, in Loeb’s 
Class. Lib. 2 vols. ’21). 

Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica (ed. R. C. Seaton, Oxf. ; Eng. 
tr. A. S. Way, Lond. ’or; also by R. C. Seaton in Loeb’s 
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Apuleius, Metamorphoses, or Golden Ass, especially bk. XI. 
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CHIEF RELEVANT ANCIENT SOURCES 333 


Oxf. ’10 ; also by Adlington and Gaselee in Loeb’s Class. 
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De Deo Socratis ; De Platone ; De Mundo, ed. P. Thomas, 
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Aratus, Phaenomena, ed. E. Maas, Berlin, ’93 (Eng. tr. by G. R. 
Mair, Loeb’s Class. Library, ’21). 
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Aratea, E. Maas, Berlin, ’g2. 
Aristides, Apology (Syriac text with Eng. tr. by J. R. Harris, with 
portion of Greek text by J. A. Robinson in Texts and Studies, 
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Aristides, Aelius Rhetor, Ovationes Sacrae, ed. Dindorf, 3 vols. 
Leip. ’29. 
Aristophanes, Nubes, ll., 223 ff., 382 ff. 
Lysistrata, 388 ff. 
Vespes, 5 ff. 
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Thesmae, 134 ff. 
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Asclepiasts, Guild of, in Attica, J.G. II. 617. 
Asclepius, v. Corpus Hermeticum. 
Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae (ed. G. Kaibel) 3 vols. Leip. ’87-’90 ; 
Eng. tr. by C. D. Yonge in Bohn’s Class. Library). 
Athenagoras, Apology for the Christians (Legatio) (ed. J. C. T. 
Otto, Jena, 57, Eng. tr. by B. P. Pratten in Ante-Nicene 
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Aitis, Hymn to, Hippolytus, Ref. omn. Haer. (Philosoph.) V. 9. 
Augustine, De Civitate Dei (ed. B. Dombart, 2 vols. Leip. ’77- 
92); Eng. tr. by Marcus Dods in Post-Nicene Fathers). 
Augustus, Res Gestae Divi Augusti ex Monumentis Ancyrano et 
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Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae (ed. C. Hosius, Leip. ’03 ; Eng. tr. 
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Cleanthes (in Arnim’s Stoic. Vet. Frag. Fragments also by A. C. 
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Protrepticus, esp. II. 

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Paedagogus and Protrepticus, O. Stahlin (Leip. 05-9). Eng. 
tr. of Stromateis, bk. VII, by J. B. Mayor, Lond. ’o2 ; 
of whole by W. Wilson, in Clark’s Ante-Nicene Library (2 
vols. Edin. ’67-0). 

Collegia: Roman Legislation re, in Bruns’ Fontes, pt. II. ch, 
XII. 

Conon, Diegeseis (in Photius’ Bibliotheca, Migne, P. Gr.) 

Cornutus, Theologiae Graecae Compendium (ed. C. Lang, Leip. 
*gI). 

Corpus Haereseologicum, ed. by F. Oehler, 5 parts, Berlin, ’56-61). 

Corpus Hermeticum : 

Poimandres (ed. G. Parthey, Berlin, 54; ed. R. Reitzenstein, 
Leip. ’04). 

Asclepius, or The Perfect Word (Latin version by (?) Apuleius, 
ed. P. Thomas, Leip. ’08). 

Aesculapit Definitiones ad Ammonem Regem (Greek text with 
Lat. tr. by M. Ficino in Turnebus’ ed. of Poemander, Paris, 
1554). 

Numerous Extracts in Johannes Stobaeus. 

Minor Fragments in Lactantius, Cyril, Suidas, Psellus; v. 
F. Patrizzi, Nova de universis philosophia, Ferrara, 159f. 

Eng. tr. of Poimandres from Arabic, The Divine Pymander of 
Hermes Trismegistus, by Everard, Lond. 1650 ; reprinted in 
Jour. Spec. Phil. July, ’66). 

The Theological and Philosophical Works of Hermes Trismegistus, 
Christian Neo-Platomst, by J. D. Chambers (Edin. ’82). Most 
complete tr. by G. R. S. Mead, Thrice-greatest Hermes 
(3 vols. Lond. and Benares, ’06). 

Cultores Dianae et Antinoi, the Lexs Collegi from inscription of 
Lanuvium, C.J. Lat. XIV, 2112: Bruns, Fontes, 6th ed. 
p- 345 ff.: Dessau, Inuscr. Lat. Selectae, 7212. 

Curtius, R. Quintus, De rebus gestis Alexandri Magni (ed. E. 
Heidicke, ’08). 

Cyril, Contva Julianum. 


336 BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Damascius De primis principris, ed. C. A. Ruelle, 2 parts, Par. 
89 ; French tr. A. E. Chaignet, Par. ’98). 

Democritus, De Sympathiis et Antipathtis (in Fabricius, Biblio- 
theca Graeca, IV. pt. II, pp. 333-8). 

Demosthenes, De Corona, 259 ff. 

Diels, H. Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Greek text with Germ. 
tr. 2 vols. in 3 parts, 2nd ed. Berlin, ’03—10 ; 3rd ed. ’12 ff. ; 
4th ed. ’22). 

Poetarum Philosophorum Graecorum Fragmenta (Berlin, ’or). 
Doxographi Graeci (Berlin, ’79). 

Dio Cassius, Historia Romana (ed. L. Dindorf, Leip. ’63-5 ; ed. 
J. Melber, Leip. ’90f.; U. P. Boissevain, 3 vols. Berl. 
‘95-01. Eng. tr. in g vols. in progress by E. Cary in Loeb’s 
Class. Lib.). . 

Dio Chrysostom, Orationes (ed. L. Dindorf, Leip. ’57 ; best ed. 
J. de Arnim, 2 vols. Berlin, ’93-96). 

Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica (ed. Vogel, 3 vols. Leip. 
83-93). 

Diogenes Laertius, De Vitis Philosopbhorum (ed. H. G. Hiibner, 
2 vols. Leip. ’28—-’31 ; also by C. G. Cobet, Didot, Paris, 
78. Eng. tr. by C. D. Yonge, Lond. ’53). 

Dionysiac Mysteries: Edict of Ptolemy Philopator on private 
initiations outside Alexandria (Greek text and Germ. tr. 
by W. v. Schubart in Amiliche Berichte aus d. konig. 
Kunstsammlungen of Strassburg, XX XVIII, 7, coll. 189-97. 
Text and Fr. tr. by P. Roussel in Comptes Rendus, ’19, p. 238. 
Cf. R. Reitzenstein, Archiv f. Religionswis. XIX. °18, 
pp. IgI-I4). 

Dionysiac Thiasos of Athenians, second cent. B.c. Insc. Graecae, 
Tis 628, 

Dionysius, Periegetes (in C. Miiller, Geographi Graeci Minores, II, 
Paris, 82). 

Dionysius Halicarnassus, Antiquitates Romanae (ed. C. Jacoby, 
Leip. ’85-’05). 

Dithyramb of the Women of Elis, in Plutarch, Quaest. Gr. 
XXXVI, p. 299. 

Epictetus, Dissertationes (H. Schenkl, Leip. ’04. Eng. tr. by G. 
Long, Lond. ’48, ’gI). 

Epidaurian temple-cures inscribed on slabs, v. Cavvadias, “E¢- 
"Apx. ’83, p. 108 ff.; ’85, p. 16 ff. Cavvadias, Fouzlles 
d’ Epidaure (Athens, ’91). 


CHIEF RELEVANT ANCIENT SOURCES 337 


Epiphanius, Panaria (Greek text with Lat. tr. of Petavius and 
comm. of A. Jahn, in Oehler’s Corpus Haeresiologicum, 
II-III). 

Etymologicum Magnum (Oxf. ’48 ; ed. Sylburg, Leip. 1816). 

Eunapius, Vitae Sophistarum (Greek text with Lat. tr. by J. F. 
Boissonade in Didot’s ed., Paris, ’73). 

Euripides, Bacchae (Eng. tr. by G. Murray, or A. S. Way). 

Fragment of the Cretans (in Frag. tragica papyracea, V., A. 

Hunt, Oxf. ’12). Chorus from Creéans in Porphyry, De Abst. 
IV. 19 ; No. 475 in Nauck’s Tvagicorum graec. frag.; Didot’s 
ed. p. 735. Eng. tr. by G. Murray, Euripides, 5th ed. p. 324. 

Phoenissae, 649 ff. 

Alcestis, 962 ff. 

Ion, 1074-86. 

Helena, 1301-68. 

Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica (4 vols. T. Gaisford, Oxf. 
43): 

Fairbanks, A. The First Philosophers of Greece (Fragments, 
with Eng. tr. and notes, Lond. ’98). 

Fontes Historiae Religionum ex Auctoribus Graecis et Latinis 
collectos (ed. C. Clemen, Bonn, ’20 f.). 

Fragmenta Herculanensia (W. Scott, Oxf. ’85). 

Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum (ed. C. and Th. Miiller, 
Didot, Paris, 4 vols. ’41-53). 

Fragmenta Philosophorum Graecorum (ed. F. G. A. Mullach, 
3 vols. Paris, 81-3). 

Galenus, Opera (ed. Marquardt, Miller, and others, in Teubner, 
Leip. "84-93. Eng. tr. of Natural Faculties, by A. J. Brock 
in Loeb’s Class. Library). 

Geminus, Elementa astronomica (Greek, with Germ. tr. by K. 
Manitius, Leip. ’98). 

Gnosticism : 

Codex Askewtanus, containing Coptic text of (1) Pistis Sophia, 
(2) Part of the Texts of the Saviour, (3) Frag. on The 
Mystery of the Ineffable. 

(French tr. by E. Amélineau, Paris, ’95; Germ. tr. by 
C. Schmidt in Koptisch-Gnostische Schriften, Leip. ’05 ; 
Eng. tr. by G. R. S. Mead, Lond. ’96, 2nd ed. ’2r; by 
F. Legge in S.P.C.K. Lond. ’22.) 

Papyrus Brucianus in Bodleian Library, Oxford, containing 
according to Schmidt’s analysis, (1) The Books of Jeou 


23 


338 BIBLIOGRAPHY 


(entitled by Mead, The Book of the Great Logos according 
to the Mystery); (2) Two fragments of Gnostic invoca- 
tions; (3) Frag. of the Passage of the Soul through the 
Archon of the Middle Region ; (4) Fragment of an old 
Gnostic work. 

(Coptic text with Fr. tr. by Amélineau-in Notices et Extraits 
de MSS. dela Bibliothéque nationale et autres Bibliothéques, 
vol. XXIX, pt. I, Paris, ’9r. Text with Germ. tr. by 
C. Schmidt in Gnostische Schriften in Kopiischer Sprache 
aus dem Codex Brucianus, Leip. ’92.) 

The Akhmim Papyrus, in the Berlin Museum of Egyptian 

Antiquities, containing (1) Gospel of Mary Apocryphon 
(? Apocalypse) of John, (2) The Wisdom of Jesus Christ, 
(3) Acts of Peter. 

Cf. C. Schmidt, Ein vor-irenaeisches gnostisches Original-Werk 
in koptischer Sprache (in Sitzber. d. kgl. Akad. preuss. 
Akad. d. Wiss. 96). 

Excerpta Theodoti (Greek text Clemens Alex. III, pp. 103-33 
of Die griech. christ. Schrifist. and in C. C. J. Bunsen’s 
Analecta Antenicaena, I, pp. 205-78, with Lat. tr. by J. 
Bernays, Lond. ’54). 

Letter of Ptolemaeus to Flora (in Epiphanius, Panaria, Haer. 
XXXIII. 3-7; Oehler, Il, I. 1. pp. 400-12 with Lat. tr. 
Ed. A. Harnack, 2nd ed. Bonn ’12 in Ki. Texte). 

Naassene Psalm (in Hippolytus’ Philosophoumena, V. 182-4, 
Cruice; Eng. tr. p. 145 in Legge’s tr. or II, p. 62 in his 
Forerunners, etc. ; cf. Wendland, Berl. phil. Woch, ’o2 sp. 
1324; A. Swoboda, Wiener Studien, XXVII. 2). 

The Hymn of Bardaisan = The Hymn of the Soul. 

The Hymn of the Soulin Acta Thomae, ch. 108-13. Syriac text 
by A. S. Bevan in Texts and Studies, V. 3. Camb. ’97. Also 
by G. Hoffmann in Zettschr. f. neut. Wiss. IV, p. 273 ff. ; 
and in Wright’s Afoc. Acis of the Apostles, 1; Lipsius and 
Bonnet, Acta Apost. apocr. II, 2, pp. 219-24, Leip. ’03. 
(Eng. tr. by F. C. Burkitt, Lond. ’99 ; by G. R. S. Mead in 
Fragments of a Faith Forgotten, pp. 406-14, under title The 
Hymn of the Robe of Glory, and separately under same 
title Lond. ’08. Excellent Germ. verse tr. in Schultz, 
Dokumente, pp. 13-21 ; also prose by Hoffmann, /.c.) 

The Hymn of Jesus, in Acta Johannis, XI. Greek text and tr. 
by M. R. James in Texts and Studies, V, 1, pp. 10-15. 


CHIEF RELEVANT ANCIENT SOURCES 339 


Heracleon, Extant Fragments, Greek text by A. E. Brooke 
in Texts and Studies, I, 4, Camb. ’or. 

Basilidis Fragmenta (from VI book of Hippolytus, in Bunsen, 
ib. I. pp. 55-75). 

Valentini Fragmenita (from book VII of Hippolytus, in 
Bunsen, Analecia Antenicaena, pp. 77-096). 

Basilidis Fragmenta (from book VII of Hippolytus, in 
Bunsen, 7b. I. pp. 55-75). 

For further fragments cf. A. Hilgenfeld, Ketzergeschichte 
des Urchristentums (Leip. ’84). 

Harpocration, Lexicon (Dindorf, 2 vols. Oxf. ’53). 

Helbig, W. Wandgemdlde der vom Vesuv verschiitteten Stdadte 
Campamens (Leip. ’68). 

Heliolatry, v.s. Sun-worship. 

Herachiti Ephesit Reliquiae, ed. I. Bywater, Oxf. 77; and in 
Diels, Fragmente d. Vorsokratiker, v.s. Macchioro. 

Hermias, [vrisio gentilium philosophorum, v.s. Otto. 

Hermippus, sive De Astrologia Dialogus (Anonymi Christiani, ed. 
W. Kroll and P. Viereck, Leip. ’95). 

Herodotus, Histories (esp. I. 34-45 ; II. 42, 48, 50-G6o, 81, 144-6, 
156; IV. 79-108; VII. 6; VIII. 65). (Eng. tr. by G. C. 
Macaulay, Lond. ’go, 2 vols.) 

Hierocles, Commentary on the Golden Verses of Pythagoras (in 
Mullach, Fragmenta, I, p. 480 ff.), Eng. tr. by N. Rowe, 
Lond. ’06. 

Hippolytus, Philosophoumena, sive Omnium Haeresium Refutatio 
(ed. P. M. Cruice, Paris, 60, with Lat. tr. Best ed. by P. 
Wendland in Griech. christ. Kirchenvater, 3 vols. Berlin, 
vol. I, ’16). 

Eng. tr. by MacMahon in Ante-Nicene Library, Edin. 68 ; best 
tr. by F. Legge, 2 vols. Lond. ’2r. 

Historiae Augustae Scriptores, v.s. Scriptores Hist. Aug. 

Homer, Odyssey, XI (cf. U- von Wilamowitz-Mollendorf, Hom. 
Untersuchungen, p. 1099 ff.). 

Homeric Hymns, esp. II (To Demeter), VII (To Dionysos), VIII 
(To Ares), XIV (To the Mother of the Gods). Best ed. by 
T. W. Allen and E. E. Sikes, Lond. ’04; Eng. tr. by J. Edgar, 
Edin. ’91; A. Lang, Lond. ’99; H. G. Evelyn-White in 
Loeb’s Library, ’14. 

Hopfner, Th. Fontes Historiae Religionis Aegypticae (3 parts, 
Bonn, ’22 f., v.s. Fontes, etc.). 


340 BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Horace, Carmen Saeculare (cf. Zosimus, II. 5, 6). 

Iamblichus, De Vita Pythagorica (ed. T. Kiessling, Leip. 1815 ; A. 
Nauck, St. Petersburg, ’84) ; Eng. tr. by T. Taylor, Lond. 
1818. 

De Mysterits (ed. G. Parthey, Berlin, ’57 ; T. Gale, with Lat. 
tr. Oxf. 1678; Eng. tr. by T. Taylor, Lond. 1821). 

Protrepticus, Exhortatio ad Philosophiam (ed. H. Pistelli, Leip. 
*88). 

Inscriptions : 

Corpus Inscrsptionum Graecarum (A. Boeckh and oe Berlin, 
1828-77). 

Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (by Mommsen and others, 
1863 ff.). 

Inscriptiones Graecae (in course of publication by the Prussian 
Academy, Berlin, since 1873) in following main parts: 
Corpus Inscriptionum Atticarum (Berlin, ’73-97). 

Corpus Inscriptionum Graeciae Septentrionalis (ed. W. 
Dittenberger, Ber. ’92). 
Inscriptiones Graecae Siciliae et Iialiae (G. Kaibel, Ber. 


? 


go. 

Inscriptiones Graecae Insularum Maris Aegae (H. v. 
Gaertringen and W. R. Paton, Ber. ’95 f.). 

Inscriptiones Argolidis. 
Inscriptiones Megaridis et Boeotiae. 

Inscriptiones Orss Septentrionalis Ponts Euxini (E. H. Minns, 
Camb. ’I3). 

Inscriptionum Latinarum amplissima selectarum Collectio 
(J. C. Orelli and W. Henzen, 3 vols. Turin, 1828-56). 

Leges Graecorum sacrae e titulis collectae (J. v. Prott and L. 
Ziehen, Leip. ’96—’06). 

Inscrizione greche e latine (by E. Breccia in Antiquités égypt. du 
Musée d@ Alexandre). 

Recueil des Inscriptions grecques-chrétiennes d’ Egypte (G. Le- 
febure, Cairo, ’07). 

Sammelbuch Griechischer Urkunden aus Agypten (F. Preisigke, 
I, Strassburg, ’15 f. Contains also papyri). 

Collection of Ancient Greek Inscriptions in the British Museum 
(ed. E. L. Hicks, Oxf. ’74 ff.). 

Defixionum Tabellae (A. Audollent, Paris, ’04). 

Inscriptiones Graecae ad res Romanas pertinentes (R. Cagnat, 
3 vols. Paris, ’II-14). 


CHIEF RELEVANT ANCIENT SOURCES 34 1 


Orientis Graecae Inscriptiones Selectae (W. Dittenberger, 2 vols, 
Leip. ’03-5). 

Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum (W. Dittenberger, 2nd ed. 
2 vols. and index, Leip. ’88-91; 3rd ed. 4 vols. Leip. 
’I5-20). 

Recueil d’Inscriptions grecques, also Supplement (Ch. Michel , 
Paris, 00-12). 

Recueil des Inscriptions grecques et latines de l Egypte (M. 
Letronne, 2 vols. Paris, ’42-8). 

Inscriptiones antiquae Ovae septentrionalis Ponti Euxini 
Graecae et Latinae (B. Latyschev, St. Petersburg, ’85). 

Epigrammata Graeca (G. Kaibel, Berlin, ’78). 

Fouilles d’Epidaure (P. Cavvadias, Athens, ’91). 

Inscriptions grecques et latines recueillies en Gréce et en Asie 
Mineure (P. Le Bas and W. H. Waddington, Paris, ’70). 

Antike Fluchtafeln (R. Wiinsch, Bonn, ’07). 

Selection in Foucart’s Des Associations religieuses, pp. 187- 
243. 

Invocation of Isis, early second cent. Greek text, tr. and comm. 
in Oxyrhynchus Papyrt, XI, no. 1380, pp. 190-220. 

Liturgical text of Isis cult in second or third cent. inscr. from 
Tos, Dittenberger, Sylloge, 3rd ed. 1267, or R. Weil, Ath. 

Mitth. Il, ’77, p. 81 ff.; I.G. XII, V, 1, no. 14; cf. Diodorus, 
Bibi la27. 

The Burden of Isis: being the Laments of Isis and Nephthys 
(tr. by J. T. Dennis, Lond. ’Io). 

Tobacchoi, Regulations of a Thiasos of, in Greek inscription 
published by S. Wide in Athenische Mitteilungen, ’94, XIX, 
p. 248 ff. ; No. 46, pp. 132-47 of Prott-Ziehen, Leges Graec. 
Sacrae; Dittenberger, Sylloge, 2nd ed. no. 737, 3rd ed. 
no. 1109 ; Maas, Orpheus, pp. 18-32. 

Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses (ed. W. W. Harvey, 2 vols. Camb. 
57; Eng. tr. by A. Roberts and W. H. Rambant in Clark’s 
Ante-Nicene Library, 2 vols. Edin. ’68-9 ; also by F. R. M. 
Hitchcock in S.P.C.K. 2 vols. Lond. ’16). 

Isis, Praises of, found on a tomb of Osiris and Isis, Diodorus 
Siculus, I. 27. 

Poetic dedication to Isis, 7.G. XII, pt. V. 1, p. 213 f. 

Prose dedication to, 7b. p. 217. 

Isocrates, Panegyric (ed. J. E. Sandys, Lond. ’97). 

Isyllos, Paean of, from Epidaurus, late fourth cent. B.c. Eph. 


342 BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Arch. ’85, p. 65, v. Wilamowitz-MGllendorf, Isyllos v. Epi- 

daurus, ’86 (in Philolog. Unters.). 

Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews (e.g. XVIII. 3, 4). 

Julian the ‘ Apostate’: Orationes, esp. IV (Hymn to the Sovereign 
Sun), V (Hymn to the Mother of the Gods), VI (To the un- 
educated Cynics), VII (To the Cynic Heraclius). 

Letter to Themisiius (frag.). 
Against the Christians (frag.). 

Two complete French trs. by R- Tourlet, 3 vols. Paris, 1821, 
and by E. Talbot, Paris, °63; Eng. tr. of Hymn to the 
Sovereign Sun and To the Mother of the Gods, by T. Taylor, 
Lond. 1793 ; and of Against the Christians by same, Lond. 
1803; Greek text and Eng. tr. by W. C. Wright in Loeb’s 
Library, 3 vols. ’13. 

Justin Martyr, Apologies [and II ; Dialogue with Trypho ; Oratio 
ad Graecos ; Cohortatio ad Graecos (ed. J. C. T. Otto, 
3 vols. with Lat. tr. Leip. 76-81; Eng. tr. by Marcus Dods 
in Clark’s Ante-Nicene Library, Edin. ’67). 

Kouretes, Hymn of the, Greek text and tr. in J. Harrison, Themis, 
pp. 6-8. 

Lactantius, Institutiones Divinae (ed. S. Brandt and G. Laubmann 
in Corp. Script. eccles. Lat.; Eng. tr. by W. Fletcher in 
Clark’s Ante-Nicene Library, Edin. ’71). 

Lampridius, Aelius, in Scriptores Hist. Aug. 

Libanius, Ovationes (ed. R. Foerster, 4 vols. Leip. ’03-8). 

Livy, Ab urbe condita libri (esp. X, 47; XXIX, 11-14 ; XXXIV, 
54; XXXVI, 36; XXXIX, 8-18; XL, 29). 

Lucian, esp. Alexander; Bacchus; De Astrologia; De Dea 
Syria ; De Morte Peregrini ; De Saltatione ; Philopseudes ; 
Saturnalia (ed. J. Sommerbrodt, 3 vols. Leip. ’86—-99 ; or E. 
Nilen, Leip. Eng. tr. by H. W. and F. G. Fowler, Lond. ’o5). 

Lucretius, De Natura Rerum, Cf. II. 608 ff. 

Lycosura, mystery inscr. Dittenberger, Syl. 2nd ed. 939, 3rd ed. 
999 ; Prott-Ziehen, II. 63 ; I.G. V. 2, 514. 

Macarius Magnes, Apocritica (Greek text by Blondel and 
Foucart, Paris, 76; Eng. tr. by T. W. Crafer, in S.P.C.K. 
Lond. ’I9). 

Macrobius, Ambrosius Theodosius, Commentarium in Somnium 
Scipionis and Saturnalia (ed. F. Eyssenhardt, Leip. ’93; Fr. 
tr. in Nisard’s Auteurs latins, Paris, 45). 

Magi, Hymn of the: Dio Chrysostom, Or. XXXVI, 39-54 (de 


CHIEF RELEVANT ANCIENT SOURCES 343 


Arnim, II, pp. 11-15 ; Cumont, 7. e¢ M. II, pp. 60-64 ; 
part in Clemen, Fontes hist. rel. pers., p. 44 fi.). 
Magic: 

Out of a vast literature cf. esp. the following : 

Magic Papyrus of A.D. 395 in Museum of Leyden, published by 
C. Leemans in Papyri Graeci Muset antig. pub. Lugdum 
Batavorum, 2 vols. ’83-5, vol. II, pp. 77-198. Also by 
Dieterichin Jahrb. f. d. klas. Philol. Suppl. XVI, pp. 749-830, 
and in his Abraxas, pp. 167-205. 

Berlin Magical Papyri, ed. G. Parthey, in Abhandl. der Akad. 
zu Berlin, Pap. I. in ’65, pp. Iog-180. 

Wessely, Ephesia Grammaia (Vienna, ’86, in XII Jahresb. 
tiber d. kgl.-kais. Franz-Joseph Gymnasium). 

Griechische Zauberpapyn von Paris u. London (Vienna, ’88 in 
Denkschrifien d. kais. Akad. d. Wiss. zu Wien, Phil.-hist. 
XXXVI). 

Neue Griechische Zauberpapyri (Vienna, ’93, 1b. XLII). 

F. Kenyon, Greek Papyri in the British Museum, II. 

U. Wilcken, Archiv f. Papyrusforschung, I, p. 427 ff. 

R. Heim, Incantamenia Magica Graeca Latina (in Jahrb. f. 
klas. Phil. Suppl. X1X, ’93, pp. 463-576). 

Griffith, The Demotic Magical Papyrus of London and Leiden 
(Lond. ’04). 

Apuleius, Metamorphoses, and Apologia, sive De Magia (ed. 
R. Helm, Leip. ’05). 

Cato, De Re Rustica (in Scriptores rei rusticae veteres Latint, 
ed. I. M. Gesner, Leip. 1773). 

Pliny the Elder, Historia Naturalis. 

Democritus, De Sympathiis et Antipathiis (in Fabricius, Biblto- 
theca Graeca, IV, pt. 2, pp. 333-8). 

R. Wiinsch, Antike Fluchtafeln (Bonn, ’07); Defixionum 
Tabellae Atticae (Berl. ’97). 

A. Audollent, Defixionum Tabellae (Paris, ’04). 

L. Macdonald, Inscriptions relating to Sorcery in Cyprus 
(Proc. Soc. Bib. Arch. ’91, pp. 160-90). 

Cf. review of material in Hubert’s art. Magia in Daremberg- 
Saglio, Dictionnaire; and R. Wiinsch, Antikes Zauber- 
gerat aus Pergamon, in Jahrb. d. Arch. Inst. V1. 19. 

Manetho, Apotelesmaticorum lib. VI (ed. A. Koechly, Leip. 

58). 

Manilius, Astronomica (ed. J. v. Wagenigen, Leip. ’15 ; 12h e. 


344 BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Postgate, Lond. ’94-’05. Good ed. with Eng. tr. of Bk. II 

by Garrod, Lond.). 

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (ed. J. Stich, Leip. ’82; J. H. 
Leopold, Oxf. Eng. tr. with introd. byG. H. Rendall, 2nd ed. 
Lond. ’or; alsoby C. R. Haines in Loeb’s Library, Lond. ’16). 

Maternus, Julius Firmicus, De Errore profanarum religionum 
(ed. K. Ziegler, Leip. ’07). 

Matheseos Libri VIII (ed. W. Kroll and F. Skutsch, Leip.). 

Maximus of Tyre (ed. F. Dubner, Paris, ’40 ; H. Hobein, Leip. 
"m0. Eng. tr. by T. Taylor, 2 vols. Lond. 1804). 

Mendel, Catalogue des sculptures grecques, romaines, byzantines 
(Musée Impérial ottoman, 3 vols., 12 ff.). 

Minucius Felix, Octavius (ed. H. Bonig, Leip. ’03. Eng. tr. by 
R. E. Wallis in Clark’s Ante-Nicene Library, Edin. ; by J. H. 
Freese in S.P.C.K. Lond. n.d.). 

Mithra, Liturgy of (so-called), v. Dieterich, Eine Mithrasliturgie. 

Naassene Psalm, v.s. Gnosticism. 

Nechepsonis et Petosiridis Fragmenia magica (ed. E. Riess, 
Philologus, ’91, Supp. VI, pp. 327-88). 

Nemesius, De Natura Hominis (Greek text with Lat. tr. in Migne, 
Patrologia Graeca). 

Nonnus Panopolites, Dionysiaca (ed. A. Koechly, 2 vols. Leip. 
’72-3. French tr. by Comte de Marcellus in Didot’s Bib- 
liotheca Graeca, Paris, ’56). 

Origen, Contra Celsum (in C. and V. dela Rue’s ed. Paris, 1733-59, 
reprinted in Migne; Eng. tr. by F. Crombie and W. H. 
Cairns in Clark’s Ante-Nicene Library, Edin. ’72). 

Orphism : 

Argonautica ; Lithica; Hymni. 

All three in A. C. Eschenbach’s ed. Trajecti-ad-Rhenum, 
1689 ; Tauchnitz ed. of the Orphica, Leip. 1829; G. 
Hermann’s Orphica, Leip. 1805. 

Fragments in Orphica, ed. E. Abel (Leip. and Prague, ’85). 

Nova Fragmenta Orphica, by Vari in Wiener Studien, XII, 
p. 222 ff. 

Orphicorum Fragmenia, ed. O. Kern (Berlin, ’22). 

Orphic Tablets, ed. A. Olivieri, Lamellae aureae orphicae, 

Bonn, ’15; Diels, Fragmente d. Vorsokratiker, 3rd ed. II, 

p. 163 ff.; J. Harrison, Prolegomena by G. Murray, text 

and Eng. tr. pp. 660-74. 

(Eng. tr. of Hymns by T. Taylor, Lond. 1787, reprint 1896.) 


CHIEF RELEVANT ANCIENT SOURCES 345 


Otto, J. C. T. Hermiae philosophi Irrisio gentilium philo- 
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Miltiadis Melitonts Apollinaris Reliquiae (Jena, ’72). 

Overbeck, J. A. Gesch. d. griech. Plastik (Leip. ’93-4) ; Griech. 
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223 ff., 305-30 ; Met. XV. 61-478, 622 ff. 

Paean to Dionysus, from Delphi (338 B.c.): reconstruction of 
Greek text by H. Weil in Bull. de Corr. Hell. XIX. ’95, 
p. 400 ff.; Eng. tr. in J. Harrison, Proleg. pp. 439, 542. 

Palaephatus: epi dricwy (ed. N. Festa, Leip. ’02; Mytho- 
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Panaetwi et Hecatonts Fragmenta (H. N. Fowler, Lond. ’85). 

Papyri: 

The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, vols. I-XVI, Lond. ’98-24. 

The Flinders Petrie Papyri, 3 parts, Dublin, ’91-4. 

The Tebtunis Papyri, 2 vols. Lond. ’02-7. 

The Amherst Papyrt, 2 vols. Lond. ’oo-1. 

Fayum Towns and their Papyri, Lond. ’oo. 

Agyptische Urkunden aus den kgl. Museen zu Berlin: Griech- 
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Griechische Urkunden des Agyptischen Museum zu Kairo 
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Selections from the Greek Papyri, 2nd ed. G. Milligan, Camb. 
*123 

Papyri Ercolanesi (ed. D. Comparetti, Turin, ’75). 

Papyrus ptolémaiques du Musée d’Alexandrie (G. Botti, 
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Greek Papyri tn the British Museum, ed. F. G. Kenyon, 3 vols. 
Lond. ’93-’07. 

Greek Papyri from the Cairo Museum (E. J. Goodspeed, Chicago, 
’06). 

Les Papyrus de Genéve (J. Nicole, Geneva, ’96-00). 

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Heidelberger Papyrus-Sammlung (ed. A. Deissmann, Heidel- 
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Papyrnt Fiorentina (3 vols. ed. G. Vitelli and D. Comparetti, 
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Corpus Papyrorum Rainert (ed. K. Wessely, Vienna, ’95). 

Papyrus grecs de Lille (ed. P. Jouget, 2 parts, Paris, ’07-8). 
See also under Magic. 


346 BIBLIOGRAPHY 


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Peter, Apocalypse of, Greek text in Robinson and James, The 
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Petosiris, vol. VII, p. 130 ff. of Catalogus Astrologorum Grae- 
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CHIEF RELEVANT ANCIENT SOURCES 347 


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Polybius (ed. L. Dindorf, Leip. 86-8; Eng. tr. in progress in 
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Parmenides (ed. A. E. Chaignet, ’00-3). 

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348 BIBLIOGRAPHY 


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CHIEF RELEVANT ANCIENT SOURCES 349 


Seneca, Epistulae Morales (ed. O. Hense, Leip. ’14) ; Dialogorum 
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Leip. ’07) ; Eng. tr. of Epistulae Morales, by R. M. Gummere, 
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J. W. Basore; cf. E. Badstiibner, Beitr. z. Erkldrung der 
phil. Schriften Senecas, Hamb. ’ot. 

Serapis, v. important prose and verse inscr. from Delos about 
200 B.c. in I.G. XI. 4,1299 ; Weinreich, Neue Urkunden z. 
Sarapisreligion, pp. 31-3. 

Servius, Commentary to Virgil's Aeneid. 

Sextus Empiricus (ed. I. Bekker, Berlin, ’42). 

Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle (ed. Heiberg and others, 
Berlin). 

Sopatros (in C. Walz, Rhetores Graect, VIII). 

Sophocles, Antigone, 944-87, III5-54. 

Oedipus Rex, 211 fi. 

Statius, Silvae (ed. A. Klotz, Leip. ’71) ; Thebais (ed. P. Kohl- 
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Stephanus Byzantinus, Ethnica (ed. A. Westermann, Leip. 

Stobaeus, Johannes, Eclogae (ed. A. Meineke, 2 vols. Leip.) ; 
T. Gaisford, 2 vols. Oxf. ’50 ; Florilegium (A. Meineke, 4 
vols. Leip.) ; Opera (ed. C. Wachsmuth and O. Hense, 
Berlin, ’84). 

Strabo, Geographica (ed. A. Meineke, 3 vols. Leip. 66-77. Eng. 
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Suetonius, Opera (ed. C. L. Roth, Leip. 08. Eng. tr. by J. C. 
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VIII ; Julian, Oratio, 1V (Hymn to King Sun); Ps.-Plato, 
Epinoms. 

Symmachus, Episiulae and Relationes (ed. O. Seeck, vol. VI. 1 
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Tacitus, Annales and Historiae. 

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tr. by Cousin, Paris, 1678 ; Eng. tr. anon. Lond. 1684, 1814). 


INDEX OF AUTHORS 


Adam, Mrs. J., 108 

Adam, J., 154 

Anderson, F., 195, 295 

Andocides, 240 

Angus, S., 10, 64, 159, 219, 271, 312, 
359 

Anrich, G., 39, 76, 93,112,225; 
175 f., 227, 244, 262 

Apuleius, 40, 61 f., 71, 78, 81,85 f., 
O4dt., LTO LLG, WiZas TOA IO. 
139, 145 f., 148, 191 f., 240, 289 

Aristides, 64, 71, 135, 140, 172, 228 

Aristobulus, 29 

Aristophanes, 79, 83, 91, 135 

Aristotle, 93, to1, 104 f., 210 f. 

Arnim, H. v., 228 

Arnobius, 62, 115, 123, 130, 308 

Arnold) HOV in62) (2 t 255.220, 
286, 289 

Arrian, 19, 51, 188 

Athanasius, 107 

Athenaeus, 227 

Athenagoras, 59 

Augustine, 8, 27, 36, 107, I14, 214, 
308 

Ausfeld, C., 5 

ust, 4) 32,35 f., 66, 86, 127, 
190, 274 


Bacon, B. W., 258 

Barker, E., 4 

Baudissin, W. W. v., 117 

Berthelot, M., 302 

Bevan, E. R., 73, 253 

Bigg, C., 176, 225, 244, 256, 304 

Blackie, J. S., 273 

Blant, Le, 51 

Boissier, G., 38, 71, 120, 162, 194, 
196 ff., 205, 279 

Boll, Fr., 167, 169 

Bousset, W., 66, 83, 98, 103, I12, 
116, 292 f., 296 

Bréhier, E., 292 

Bruno, C. G., 186 

Burkitt, F. C., 51 

Bussell, F. W., 208, 284, 299 

Butcher, S. H., 19, 189 


Caird, E., 73 

Cappelle, W., 67, 217, 221 

Case, S..J., 4 

Catullus, 88, 238 

Cave, S., 260 

Charles, R. H., 65, 179 ff. 

Cicero, 5, 7, 33, 39, 48, 53, 67, 105, 
108, 140, 229, 231, 239, 285, 312 

Clemen, C., 127, 131 

Clement of Alexandria, viii, 40, 54, 
59, 62, 81, 85, 92, 106, 114, 115, 
130, 264, 260f., 308 

Clementine Homilies, 132 

Clement of Rome, 117 

Conway, R. S., 213, 313 

Cornford, F. M., 13, 63 

Cornutus, 48 f 

Creuzer, F., 39, 41, 236 

Cumont, Fr., 7, 49, 60 f., 72, 84 ff., 
Of CAG ENE? Hi. 120, 130) 230 £4 
147, 157, 159,. 165 ff., 194, 221, 
231, 244, 247, 250 f., 258, 264 

Curtius, Q., 51 

Cyprian, 256 

Cyril of Jerusalem, 132 


Damascius, 97 

Davis, G. M. N., 246 

Deissmann, A., 4, 18, 26, 86, 145, 
268 

Delacroix, H., 136 

Demosthenes, 86, 90, 237 

Dempsey, T., 167 

Denis, J., 224, 230, 300 

Dibelius, M., 39, 69, 72 f., 93 

Diels, H., 111, 118 

Dieterich, A., 19 f., 53, 69, 72, 90, 
95 ff., 99, 102, 106, 110 ff., 115 ff., 
TSA PAO LOA POO L 7Ou 2A Tati 
271, 291, 300 

Dill, S., 4, 49, 66, 88, 94, 135, 163, 
166, 175, 187, 194, 196, 200, 204 f., 
232, 244, 266, 313 

Dio Cassius, 254 

Dio of Prusa, 91 

Diodorus, 79, 239 

Diogenes Laertius, 90, 120, 216, 285 


35t 


352 


Dobschitz, E. v., 218, 222 f., 262 
Dumaine, H., 222 


Edersheim, A., 28 

Eisler, R., 66, q66 

Emmet, C. W., 271 

Epictetus, 5, 48, 108, 112, 208, 211, 
216/233) 240r2es5 1.512 

Euripides, 39, 86, 102, 230 

Eusebius, 308 


Fairweather, W., 65, 178, 204 

Farnell, L. R., 14, 44, 59, 66, 79, 
81, 93, 115, 170, 173, 204, 206, 
216, 230, 236, 239, 243 f. 

Faye, E. de, 175, 290 

Ferguson, W. S., 21 

Ferrero, G., 67, 163 

Florus, Julius, 133 

Foucart, P:, 90 fiji 2)4115,2.120; 
196, 203, 238, 246 

Fowler, W. W., 32, 
184 f., 312 

Frazer, J. G., 140 

Freeman, E. A., 15 

Friedlander, L., 24 

Fuller, B. A. G., 206, 211 


106 f., 156, 


Gardner, P., 44, 76, 100, 130, 138, 
142,166, :202,) 207,244 £5) 255; 
279, 283 

Geffcken, J., 67, 271, 306 

Gibbon, E., 273 

Giles AS Pji 3% 

Glover, TI. K:) 1760, 200, 1213, 215; 
244, 257, 264, 206, 286, 310 

Graillot, H., 84 

Gruppe, O., 14, 150, 155, 202, 244, 
248, 296 

Gunkel, H., 283 


Hardy, E. G., 279 

Harnack, A. v., 19, 116, 153, 250, 
271, 275, 277, 308 f. 

Harpocration, 90 

Harrison, J., 91, 110, 115, 152 f., 
173 

Hatch 4507 1773ti 893, 200). 2308 
244, 294 

Hatch; W. H. P., 288 f.,'292 ff. 

Hausrath, A., 207 

(Fever shen 1 7, 

Heitmiuller, W., 130 

Hepding, H., 60, 71, 86, 88, 94£., 
TIO, 121 

Heraclitus, 118 

Hermeticum, Corpus, 53, 70, 76, 
OO. O63) 08 tf Oz auInO £0227. 
229, 241 f., 248, 290 


INDEX OF AUTHORS 


Herodotus, 248 
Hippolytus, 68, 97, 116 
Hirzel, R., 229 
Holtzmann, H. J., 131 
Homer, 117 

Homeric Allegories, 50 
Homeric Hymns, 140 
Horace, 27, 37, 109, 212 


Iamblichus, 63, 67, 102, 267 

Ignatius, 132, 308 

Inge, W. R., vii, 63 f., ror f., 107, 
243 £., 253, 296, 304 

Irenaeus, 116 


Jacoby, A., 242 
Jerome, 83, 88, 116, 220 
Jevons, F. B., 196, 244 
Jones, H., 210 
Jones, W. H. S., 188 
Jong, K. H. E. de, 58, 136 
Josephus, 27, 29, 113, 271 
Julian, 141, 230, 264, 267 
Justin Martyr, 129, 268 
Juvenal, 5, 27, 81, 84, 86, 88, 134, 
238 


Kaerst, J., 2, 65, 156, 177, 183, 187, 
too f. 

Kattenbusch, F., 138 

Kennedy, H. A. A., 73, 93 ff., 103, 
130, 152, 170, 211, 215, 241, 244, 
292 f., 295, 302 

Kenyon, F. G., 102, 110, 227 

Kern, O., 80 

Kretschmer, P., 18 

Kroll, J., 72, 98 

Kroll, W., 70 


Lactantius, 88, 106, 115 

Lafaye, G., 66, 113, 125 ff., 133, 145, 
192, 240, 246 

Lake, K., 4, 17, 63, 265 

Lampridius, 80, 84, 192, 198 

Lecky, W. E. H., 274, 282 

Leclercq, A. Bouché, 66, 164 ff., 
223, 280 

Leclercq, H., 187 

Legge, F., 4, 9, 17, 19f., 28, 04) 
122, 126, 147, 165, 194f., 202 f., 
208 f., 251 f., 254 

Lenormant, F., 174 

Libanius, 80 

Liechtenhahn, R., 116 

Lietzmann, H., 130, 293 

Liturgy of Mithra, 136, 248 

Livy, 66, 82 

Lobeck, C. A., 39, 76 ff., 90 ff., 95, 
115, 236, 262 


INDEX OF AUTHORS 


Loisy, A., 244, 273 

Lucian, 5, 8, 80, 90, 211, 284 
Lucretius, 7 f., 73 

Lysias, 39 


Maas, E. W. T., 119, 145 

Macarius, Magnes, 267 

Macchioro, v, 13, 39f., 46, 52, 58, 
64, 66, 84, 90f., 95, 100, 112, 115, 
117 f., 150, 152, 202, 271, 295 

Macdonald, L., 254 

McGiffert, A. C., 67, 271, 274, 280, 
285 

Mackintosh, H. R., 66, 74, 100, 271, 
314 

Mahaffy, J. P., 3, 5, 19, 23 

Mair, A. W., 5, 215 

Manetho, 90 

Manilius, 72 

Marcus Aurelius, 5, 70, 73, 271 

Martha, C., 208, 300 

Martial, 125 

Maternus, Julius Firmicus, 71, 82, 
93, 97, 115, 119 f., 130 

Mau, A., 133, 192 

Maury, L. F. A., 250 

Maximus of Tyre, 5, 288 

Mead, G. R.S., 54, 72, 242, 302 

Merivale, C., 273, 305 

Methodius, 106 

Minns, E. H., 18 

Minucius Felix, 60, 62, 130, 271 

Mommsen, Th., 31, 196 f. 

Monceaux, P., 202, 266 

Moore, C. H., 244, 271 

Moore, G. F., 170 f., 298 

Morgan, W., 74, 130, 132, 294 

Mudie-Cooke, P. B., 90 

Miller, A., 196 

Murray, G., 11, 67, 151, 155, 225, 
229, 277, 301 


Neander, A., 301 
Nonnas, 102 
Norden, E., 55 ff., 302 


Oakesmith, J., 9, 108 

Olivieri, A., 115, 118, 151, 154 

Olympiodorus, 76 ff., 302 

Origen, 49, 80, 88, 216, 267, 269, 
275, 285 

Ovid, 109, 134, 212, 238 


Pausanias, 79, 83, 90, 93, 115, 209 

Persius, 5, 27 

Petra, De, 129 

Pfleiderer, O., 47 

Philo, 25, 27, 42, 56f., 67, 72, 101, 
103, 106, 211, 235 


24 


353 


Philocalus, 121 

Philostratus, 80 

Phythian-Adams, W. J., 88 

Pindar, 238 

Plato, 53, 55, 68f., 91, 101, 104, 
108, 135, 152, 154, 208, 214, 216, 
219, 232, 230f., 264, 311 

Pliny, 51, 229 

Pliny (younger), 198 

Plotinus, v, 14, 53, 68, 72, 105, 211, 
214, 266 

Plutarch, 8f., 60, 71, 79, 80f., 86, 
104 1,113), 219 ft, 124) 126,,135, 
167, 172, 188, 192, 197, 228, 230, 
234, 240, 263, 288, 306, 311 

Polybius, 225 

Porphyry, 66f., 81, 86, 89f., 103, 
123, 136, 234, 267, 288 

Posidonius, 48, 70, 221 

Preisendenz, K., 76 

Preuschen, E., 66, 223 

Pringle-Pattison, A. S., 296, 307 

Proclus, (753/701) 79,97, n1O5, 2155 
136, 146, 298 

Prudentius, 94 

Psellus, 137 

Pseudo-Apuleius, 67, 102, 117 

Pseudo-Aristeas, 29 

Pseudo-Aristotle, 67 

Pseudo-Justinian, 29 

Pseudo-Plato, 288 

Pseudo-Plutarch, 16 


Radermacher, L., 104 

Ramsay, W. M., 12, 43, 63, 81 f., 
145, 244, 271, 313 

Reinach, S., 91, 274 

Reitzenstein, R., 55, 61, 66, 95, 
98, 103 f., 106, 110 ff., 115, 139, 
169, 241, 248, 302 

Renan, E., 273, 313 

Reville, J., 168, 194 

Rittelmeyer, 227 

Robertson, A. T., 18 

Rohde, E., 13, 14, 66, 91, 95, 101, 
104 f., 110, 128 f., 151, 155, 179, 
172, 202, 223, 225, 231, 244 


Sachau, E., 18 

Sainte-Croix, G. E. J., 39 

Sallustius, 70, 98, 307 

Sanday, 297 

Santayana, G., 271 

Sauppe, H., 83 

Saussaye, Chantepie de la, 32, 37, 
150 

Sayce, A. H., 18 

Schmidt, 5 

Schmidt, C., 83 


354 INDEX OF 


Schirer, E., 28, 50 

Schwyzer, A., 18 

Scott-Moncrieff, P. D., 19, 265 

Seeley, J. R., 285, 282, 297 

Sellar, W. Y., 7, 185 

Seneca, 55, 67, 79, 84, 93, 112, 
208, 2T2iit..220.5 231)7253) 200; 
312 

Sethe, K., 66 

Sextus Empiricus, 48, 67 

Showerman, G., 95 

Skias, 246 

Smith, W. R., 85 

Sopatros, 239 

Sophocles, 53, 9I, 140, 173, 238 

Stark, W., 18 

Statius, 46, 60 

Steinleitner, 80 

Stobaeus, 96, 119, 262 

Strabo, 78, 90 

Strong, E., 119, 141, 289 

Suetonius, 79, 197, 271 

Suidas, 90 

Swain, J. W., 217, 220 

Symmachus, v 

Synesius, 93 


Tacitus, 26, 206, 254, 271 

Tatian, 146, 192, 252, 310 

Taylor, R. L., 192 

Taylor, T., 63 

Tertullian, 81, 90, 97, 129, 255, 
268, 271, 275, 308 

Thackeray, H. St. J., 293 f. 

Themistios, 96, 119 

Theo Smyrnaeus, 76 f. 


AUTHORS 


Theophrastus, 211 

Thumb, A., 18 

Tibullus, 125, 134, 238 

Toutainveliy oo k2say 
187, 194 


Underhill, E., r12 
Usener, H., 52, 82 


147, 165, 


Varro, 36 

Vettius, Valens, 72 f., 232 
Virgil, 1, 48, 72, 230 
Vollers, K., 153, 244 
Vopiscus, 206 


Waltzing, J. P., 196 

Walz, 239, 263 

Watson, J., 219, 303 

Weinreich, O., 145 

Weiss, J., 74 

Weizsacker, K. H., 300 

Wendland, P., 106f., 182f., 187, 
226, 250 

Wernle, P., 261 

Wesley, J., ix, 256 

Wessely, 111 

Wiedemann, A., 139 

Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, 153 

Wilcken, U., 17, 145 

Wilpert, J., 82, 117 

Wissowa, G., 31 f., 128, 190 f., 194 

Wobbermin, G., 244 


Xenophon, 79 
Zeller, E., 48, 210, 301 


INDEX OF 


Adoration, silent, 133 ff. 

Aesculapius, 20, 227, 229f., 302, 
306 f., 309 

Alexander the Great, 15 ff., 183 

Allegory, 47, 49 ff., 155 

Anahita, 194 

Andania, 83, 90, 172 

Anti-Semitism, 25 

Apologetic, of Christianity, 243, 
268 ff., 274, 310; of Judaism, 
28 f.; of the Mysteries, 63, 114 

A potheosis, v.s. Deification 

Ascent of Soul, 103, 107, 140 

Asceticism, 84f., 87, 151, 208f., 
216-225 

Astralism, v. Astrology 

Astrology, 33, 36, 48 f., 69, 164 ff., 
231, 249 ff. 

Atargatis, 88, 246 

Attis, 60, 97, 130, 140, I9I, 310 

Augustus, 5, 37, 197 

Auto-suggestion, 93, 137 


Bacchanalia, v. Dionysos 
Baptism, 45, 81 f. 


Cabiri, 80 f., 146, 240 

Chaldaei, 51, 162, 167 

Christianity, victory of, 270 fi.; 
alleged causes, 273 ff.; and the 
Mysteries, 152 ff., ch. vi, and 
Judaism, 25 ff., 277; and syncre- 
tism, 275, 279, 283 

Chthonic Ideas, 13 f., 84, 169 ff., 310 

City-State, v. Polts 

Collegia, v. Thiast 

Confession, 80 f. 

Contemplation, 49, 72, 231 f. 

Cosmic religion, 67 ff., 221, 241 

Cosmology, 73 

Cosmopolitanism, 16 f., 156 f., 193, 
205 

Criobolium, 95 

Crowning, 91 

Cybele, v, Magna Mater 


SUBJECTS 


Dea Syria, v. Atargatis 

Dead, Cult of, 173 

Deification, 20 f., 106 ff. 

Demonology, 21, 51, 74, 108, 252, 
302 

De-mortalizing, v. Deification 

Diaspora, 23 f., 193 

Dionysos, 13, 47, 66, 114 f., 129, 195, 
238, 310; and Mysticism, 14, 
103, I15, 151, 153, 174 

Divinatio, 33, 162 

Doctrine, 61 f., 93, 262 ff. 

Dolichenus, 205 

Drama, Sacramental, 58 ff., 119 

Dualism, 219 f. 


Ecstasy, 57, 85, tor f. 

Egyptian religion, 47, 92, 133, 135 

Element-Mysticism, 48, 69, 167 

Eleusis, 58 f., 66, 80, 86, 90, 97, 119, 
140, 172 

Enthousiasmos, 104 ff. 

Epiphany, 22, 109, 136, 138, 227, 
263 

Epopteia, 42, 76 £., 135 ff. 

Euhemerus, 21, 107 f., 229 


Faith, 287 ff. 
Fasting, 85 
Fatalism, 51, 169, 251, 253 


Gnosis, 53 ff., 254, 301 f., 290 
Gnosticism, 2, 20, 53, 155, 194 
God-Man, 21, 108, 228 
Graeco-Roman age, I ff., 4 
Great Mother, v. Magna Mater 
Greek Bible, 25, 50, 297 ff. 

Greek religion, to ff., 85, 170, 257 
Guilds, 154, 164, 186 f., 196 ff. 


Heliolatry, 69, 71, 87, 157, 168, 
251 
Henosis, v. Identification 


355 


386 INDEX OF 


Hermeticism, 42, 52 f., 93, 96, 98 ff., 
II2, 194, 229, 241 ff., 290 
Hymns, 98 f., 174, 191, 240 ff. 


Identification with deity, 97, 100 ff., 
IIO, 114 


Immortality, 5, 63, 110, 139 ff., 
176 f., 230-34 

Imperial cult, 109, 138 

Individualism, 65, 177ff., 204, 
257 ff. 


Initiation, 39, 62, 76ff., 96, 102, 
240 

Inscriptions, 26, 64, 71, 83, 90,94 f., 
OS LOOM GET S105. eo te Sey 
139 f., 143, 145f., 151, 154, 188, 
19 f., 205, 227, 230f., 239, 254, 
279 f., 308, 310 

Tobacchi, 83 

Isis, 19, 60 f., 81, 84, 86, 119, 123 ff., 
145 f., 176, 191, 240, 246, 279, 291 


News nee stove 2h as 2Agnr2 67 tt: 
success of propaganda, 25; pre- 
paration for Christianity, 259 ff., 
291 ff., 300 


Kabiri, v. Cabiri 
Katharsis, 76 ff., 209 
Koiné, the, 17 f., 160 


Liturgy of Mithra, 100, 102, 110, 241 
Logos, 21, 48, 106, 242, 311 
Lycosura, 83 


Ma, 88, 102, 194 

Magic, 40, 51, 111, 248 ff. 

Magna Mater, 34 £., 58, 605 86, 88, 
OF, LIS, wELO yy taki) h7O f6 070, 
194, 246, 306 

Marcossians, 116 

Marriage, Sacred, 62 f., 112 ff. 

Meals, sacramental, 127 ff. 

Mén, 59, 82 

Microcosm, 71 f. 

Mithra, 20, 38, 81, 120, 157, 246, 
291, 310 

Mithraism, 66, 88 ff., 97, 122, 135, 
147 

Monotheism, 11, 22 

Morality and Mysteries, 
142 f., 236, 244 ff., 260 

Muesis, 76 ff. 

Municipia, 201 


105 f., 


SUBJECTS 


Mysticism, 13, 16;/36,,°38;°30) ft. Gu, 
68/£)\"TOL fh, 105 ar rs eo, 
163, 169, 214, 223 f., 264, 202 ff. 


Naassenes, I16 

Naturalism, 43, 78, 247 ff., 266 f. 

Neo-Platonism, 14, 64, 164 

Neo-Pythagoreanism, 14, 64, 200, 
221, 232, 290, 311 


Olympians, v. Greek Religion 

Orientalism, 3, 68 f., 157 ff., 207 ff. 

Orphism, 14, 40, 47, 66, 71, 80, 
QI, 107, \T10, “TI5/)r1 8) whos, 
194, 209, 238; and Christianity, 
152 ff.; and the Mysteries, 107, 
152 

Osiris, v. Serapis 


Palingenesia, v. Regeneration 
Pantheism, 29, 47 f., 69, 223 
Papyri;/18,-106,"98 £4 rez) 2104, 
T05; 128,191, 223/°242. 270-200 
Passion-play, v. Drama 
Persecutions, 66, 149, 198 
Philosophy, 13 f., 29 f., 160, 220 
Pilgrimages, 86 
Polis, 2, 18, 156, 183 
Posidonius, 55, 69, 73, 166, 221, 231 
Prayer, 5, 81, 191, 230, 240 ff. 
Proselytism, 25 ff., 245 


Realism, 46, 113, 131 f., 245, 256 

Redemption, religions of, 14, 50 ff., 
155 

Regeneration, 45, 64, 82, 94 ff., 241 

Resurrection, 60, 97 

Robes, go f. 

Roman religion, 31 f., 85, 162 f., 257 

Romans, 30 


Sabazios, 129, 194, 197 

Sacraments, 53, 58 ff., 62, 95, 121, 
128 ff., 133, 137, 155, 209, 216, 236 

Sacrifices, 83 f., 125 

Salvation, 137 f., 154, 225-30 

Saviour-gods, 19, 36f., 138, 227, 
297, 306 

Scripture-reading, 90, 92 

Secrecy, 77 f: 

Septuagint, v. Greek Bible 

Serapis, 19, 60, 124, 126, 145, 229, 
246, 279, 307 

Services, Divine, 121 ff. 


INDEX OF 


Sin, 50, 206 ff., 214-16 

Stoicism, 49, 70, 207, 211, 220, 227, 
233, 289, 304, 312 

Sun, v. Heliolatry 

Superstition, 6 ff., 156, 161 

Symbola mystery-, 40, 60 f., 80, 92, 
I10, I13, 115, 130, 139, 154, 239 

Symbolism, 45 ff., 133 

Sympathia, 48f., 60, 117 ff., 229, 
305 f. 

Synagogue, 25, 261 ff. 

Syncretism, 19 f., 155, 187 ff. 


SUBJECTS 357 


Taurobolium, 46, 82, 94 f., 146, 194 
Tauroctony, 46, 120, 122, 134 
Theocrasia, 4, 19, 187 ff. 

Thiast, 44, 65, 196 ff 

Thronosts, 91 

Tolerance, ror f. 


Vespers of Isis, 125, 133 
Virginity, 117 
Visions, 136 f., 263 


Zagreus, v. Dionysos 


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